Obama: send 15,000 more troops to Afghanistan

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Re: Obama: send 15,000 more troops to Afghanistan

Postby conniption » Mon Aug 23, 2021 6:56 am

Afghanistan

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16_YskdLFzQ
1 min. 25 sec.
Tulsi Gabbard
Aug 17, 2021
transcript:

• Afghanistan. After al-Qaeda terrorists attacked us on 9/11, brave warriors, special forces quickly deployed to defeat al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. They accomplished their mission rapidly and effectively. THAT is when they should have returned home. But the elite wanted to nation-build, getting us into a 20-year war with no clear mission or strategy, causing massive suffering and wasting trillions of taxpayer dollars.

Afghanistan. The question is this: Will we hold accountable the elite (political leaders, MSM, military leaders, and defense contractors, etc.) who got us into and kept us in this foolish, short-sighted mission to turn Afghanistan into a “democracy”—costing over a trillion dollars and countless lives? Unlikely. And will we blindly allow the elite to drag us into new, even more costly military adventures in the name of spreading/protecting “democracy”? Probably.

Out of aloha, we weep for the suffering that the elite have already caused; and out of aloha, we must stop them from causing even more.


~~~

Censorship of speech must end

Rumble Link: https://rumble.com/vl1dok-censorship-of ... t-end.html
1 min. 08 sec.

Tulsi Gabbard
Published August 12, 2021
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Re: Obama: send 15,000 more troops to Afghanistan

Postby BenDhyan » Mon Aug 23, 2021 7:23 am

The confusion among the Pentagon, State, and White House spokespeople wrt the evacuation of US citizens and Afghans from Kabul is a result of, imho, the Pakistani ISI and CIA mishandling of the process.. The ISI have always been the main intermediary between the US and the Taliban negotiations, and the plans for this phase of withdrawal are not working because there are too many cooks. There is no way the CIA will take the blame so we can expect a blame game ahead between Pentagon, State Department and Whitehouse. The CIA involvement and possible incompetence will not surface, and of course the Taliban will get blamed wherever possible by all parties.
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Re: Obama: send 15,000 more troops to Afghanistan

Postby conniption » Mon Aug 23, 2021 7:18 pm

RT

On this day, 25 years ago, Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda declared war on America – but nobody listened

Scott Ritter
is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer and author of 'SCORPION KING: America's Suicidal Embrace of Nuclear Weapons from FDR to Trump.' He served in the Soviet Union as an inspector implementing the INF Treaty, in General Schwarzkopf’s staff during the Gulf War, and from 1991-1998 as a UN weapons inspector. Follow him on Twitter @RealScottRitter

23 Aug, 2021

From the hills of the Hindu Kush on August 23, 1996, Osama Bin Laden told the United States he was coming for them. One can only wonder what the world would be like today if we had taken him seriously.

As the world watches the humanitarian crisis unfolding in and around Kabul International Airport, where thousands of American soldiers, airmen, sailors, and Marines struggle to facilitate the evacuation of tens of thousands of US citizens and designated Afghan citizens out of Afghanistan, the question that comes to mind first and foremost is “how did this come to be?”

Already, there is fallout on both sides of the aisle in Congress as fingers are pointed and accusations hurled by a political elite more accustomed to assigning blame than taking responsibility. Regardless of how the evacuation of Kabul ends, there will be a settling of scores, with civilian leadership seeking to cast blame on the military, which in turn will be blaming the politicians, all the while everyone casting aspersions of the intelligence community and the inevitable accusations of an “intelligence failure.” If Americans thought the Benghazi investigation was a brutal partisan witch hunt, they ain’t seen nothing yet...

continues: https://www.rt.com/op-ed/532863-osama-b ... r-america/

(interesting comments following article - no link tho.)
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Re: Obama: send 15,000 more troops to Afghanistan

Postby Harvey » Tue Aug 24, 2021 2:52 pm

Regarding the video we've all been saturated with, I admit I didn't notice, but I should have.

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Re: Obama: send 15,000 more troops to Afghanistan

Postby BenDhyan » Wed Aug 25, 2021 6:09 am

^ Fwiw Biden wanted to use the date 9/11 for the pullout, but for some reason it is now been changed to end of August? https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/donald-trump-objects-to-9-11-as-date-of-afghanistan-withdrawal-calls-for-earlier-exit/ar-BB1fMW4G
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Re: Obama: send 15,000 more troops to Afghanistan

Postby thrulookingglass » Wed Aug 25, 2021 9:01 am

In the faintest voice I thought I heard private Hudson repeating something about "game over..."

Wow. 9/11 has been on my mind a lot lately. Reverberations. Blowback from our awful treatment of one another. Stones don't settle well unless placed on sound foundations. Get your masonry on. I'm beginning to place some faith in the idea that this is some right wing conservative "christian" "we're going to bring about biblical end times purposely" theory.
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Happens so often that...

Postby JackRiddler » Thu Aug 26, 2021 5:22 pm

...can't tell anymore when...

1) They see it coming

2) They invite it and are thrilled when it arrives

or

3) They arrange it
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I am by virtue of its might divine,
The highest Wisdom and the first Love.

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Re: Obama: send 15,000 more troops to Afghanistan

Postby Wombaticus Rex » Thu Aug 26, 2021 8:08 pm

Hard agree with JR. I've had to adjust my entire constellation of heuristics every day or so since this shit-show started.

The most obvious top-level aspects are the coordination of the logistical failure and the coordination of the media response. From there on down, though, it's been a lot of plot twists and absolutely baffling data points. If this is managed I have to revise my underlying assumptions about the end of competence in DC. If this is a series of accidents, though ... well, such is history. That's a safe bet on any given morning.

Overall, between the mineral riches, the opportunity to transform the Taliban from pashtun insurgency to proxy vassal, and the sheer migraine inducing Sunk Cost of this whole debacle -- it would seem inevitable, overall, that the US will never leave Afghanistan in any permanent, meaningful sense.

As of this evening, after feeding the critters and clearing all the plum tree shoots by the woodshed, after listening to testimony from vets and analysts and geopol nerds buddies, my working assumption is that the exertions of pulling off a kayfabe "withdrawl," at scale and at speed, created huge holes that opportunists are taking advantage of. This spans from ISIS to ISI to Iran to those creeps in Qatar and, first and foremost, the House of Saud, the least trustworthy and most essential Western allies of all time.

The whole time, I have not been able to shake the notion that the uniform media messaging against Biden indicated the classic hook to uppercut combo our corporate overlords always use to take a new President from "losing the mandate of heaven" to "sounding like the President for the first time" -- a foreign policy crisis (BOOOOO!) that leads to a new deployment of feet on the ground and carpet bombing from above (GO TEAM!). All the better if it can be turned around quickly, deliver decisive results, and get everyone but SOF the fuck out of town within six to twelve months.

I'm still sticking with that for now. Most of the "gaffes" about trusting the Taliban and sharing intelligence with them are part of the orderly transition of power. Most of the "terror attacks" that are interrupting this are the result of foreign interference or kayfabe resistance from MI6 murderers in beards and turbans.

In more granular detail, some of the "gaffes" are the total incompetence of a military leadership more interested in getting photo ops in front of Congress talking about white rage than doing their fucking jobs. Some of the "gaffes" are the result of A. Blinken's shitlib moron cabal turning eveything they touch into shit, an impressive achievement since they're operating into the fecal aerosol environment of Foggy Bottom to begin with. Some of the "terror attacks" are outraged locals trying to die in style making a clear point. Some of the "terror attacks" are exactly what they get attributed to: another Safari Club proxy of suicidal jihadis being managed by cynical drug dealers and human trafficking aficionados.
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Re: Obama: send 15,000 more troops to Afghanistan

Postby Harvey » Thu Sep 02, 2021 11:17 am

According to this unverified video, a man claiming to be an Afghan solider blames the U.S. for shooting at the crowd from above. He says only 20 people were killed by the bomb and the rest by American bullets.


https://consortiumnews.com/2021/08/29/m ... t-airport/
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Re: Obama: send 15,000 more troops to Afghanistan

Postby conniption » Thu Sep 30, 2021 5:56 am

The Saker

A Letter to the Taliban

Dr. Ejaz Akram, with Pepe Escobar – posted with permission and widely cross posted.
September 23, 2021

What happened in Afghanistan was not a mere change of government. A puppet state responsible for spreading subversion in the region was overthrown.

After the Taliban named an interim government that was regarded as quite controversial inside Afghanistan and did not exactly please the nation’s Eurasian neighbors, I asked Dr. Ejaz Akram, Professor of Religion & World Politics at the National Defense University in Islamabad, for a detailed analysis. He sent me an astonishing, unique essay that is a must-read for both East and West, presented here in a slightly edited version but with its mighty punch intact. Dr. Ejaz carries the necessary authority to not only map the regional chessboard but to suggest to the Taliban the righteous paths to heal Afghanistan after four decades of imposed war (P.E.)

On the demand for an “all-inclusive government”

Imagine if the French revolutionaries were asked to retain the elements of the kingdom of Louis XVI while forming the new republic to keep it all ‘inclusive’.

Imagine that the American revolutionaries were asked to keep the British loyalists as a part of the new American republic to keep it all inclusive.

Imagine that the Bolsheviks were asked to keep the Czarist loyalists in the government to keep it all inclusive.

Imagine that Chairman Mao was asked to keep the Kuomintang as a part of his new set up to keep things all inclusive.

Imagine that Imam Khomeini was asked to keep the elements of Reza Shah’s puppet government to keep the new Iranian government all inclusive.

Imagine that Erdogan was asked shortly after the coup to keep the Gulen movement intact to keep the Turkish government all inclusive.

Imagine that the Saudis are asked to give due representation to a quarter of its Shi’ite population to keep the Kingdom all inclusive.

Imagine that India’s Modi is asked to give full citizenship rights to Muslims, Sikhs and other minorities to keep RSS-India all inclusive.

If all of the above cannot be, then what logic is the so-called international community practicing when asking the Taliban to keep those who aided and abetted the utterly unjustified foreign occupation as a part of their government to keep things all inclusive?

What happened in Afghanistan was not a mere change of government. A puppet state responsible for killing their own people and spreading subversion in the region was overthrown. Any talk of government comes after the state formation is complete. To keep the elements of the Ancien Regime is to keep the fifth columnists alive who can undo their half-century long struggle to keep foreign rule out. It is like asking a surgeon not to remove all the cancerous tissue from a cancer patient as it might come in handy later.

A state is one group that has to have a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence. All other groups have to be disarmed and disbanded. After the state is formed and all groups subscribe to a creed that is shared by all, only then a government can be formed by a wider group of people who will reflect peoples’ sensibilities and beliefs and values. If that government does not do that the people will not consider it legitimate and the state will stage a coup and send home the government.

That state’s legitimacy comes from a principle to which the population of that country subscribes through their primordial socio-religious moorings. This common denominator in Afghanistan is none other than Muslim beliefs and values. Even though the Taliban’s overwhelming force are Pashtun (which means they practice Pashtunwali code and its understanding of Hanafi Sunni Shariah), non-Pashtun Afghans are all Muslims too. So, their common denominator still remains Islam.

Therefore, for the Taliban to insist that their rule should be built on Islamic principles is rooted in sound logic. To expect that the Afghans will subscribe to Swedish liberalism is a daydream. Ashraf Ghani was prepared to go down that foolish path, but the Taliban are too smart to do the same.

Keep in mind that the Taliban took control of the entire country without a fight. The so-called Afghan National Army disbanded so easily and hugged the Taliban fighters and many even joined them. If public opinion is not behind a resistance movement, it can never succeed.

This is the proof of Taliban’s inclusion. Unlike the Bolsheviks, the French revolutionaries, the American revolutionaries, the Saudis, the Iranians and many others who butchered their opponents on their path to power, the Taliban gave general amnesty to all. Who has more mercy in their hearts, the progenitors of the modern republics or the Taliban? We have never seen such a spectacle in recent human history. If this is not inclusion, then what is?

The reason the “international community”, as in a gang of Western nations gone rogue, is shrieking and fretting over an Islamic system for Afghanistan is because of their habitual and historical prejudice against Islam and Muslims. From crusades to colonialism, in the West’s imagination, Islam is the ultimate boogeyman. Edward Said illustrated that quite well in his famous classic, Orientalism. The contemporary Islamophobia industry is another proof of the West’s unfounded hatred of Islam. One would only hope that the Chinese and Russian political systems do not allow their ruling elite to go down that path, or else the long-term consequences for both these superpowers may not be pleasant. So far, their state media are toeing the Western logic of inclusivism, similar to their pro-America positions in the aftermath of 9/11, without much reflection as to who was right and who was wrong. We have faith that these two political systems will make better judgments this time around.

Another absurd proposition by the “August” international community is that the Taliban must fulfill the promises they made overnight. This is like asking a newborn baby to start running immediately right after being born. For anyone who knows the ABC of statecraft should know that it is not possible. First the state has to be consolidated. This will take a few months.

The interim set up must not include elements of the Ancien Regime who were on the payroll of the enemy they fought for twenty long years. Then a variety of cross-ethnic elements in the country must be recruited who subscribe to the common denominator of beliefs and values that the state is expected to be a vanguard of. This is inclusion and this will yield legitimacy of the state in the eyes of its people.

Once the state is consolidated, a government should be formed in accordance to Islamic principles. Islam is neutral to the form of government. It only insists that regardless of the form of the government, the outcome must be justice. Whether it is a kingdom, a city-state, a democracy or any other form, the outcome must be justice.

The Quran also suggests that justice is not equality. Equality is giving everyone the same; justice is giving whomever their due. Quran is kitab-al-insaf (book of justice) and not kitab-al-masawat (book of equality).

After the period of state consolidation, government formation should be achieved on the principle of meritocracy, and not multi-party democracy, in which global capitalists will turn democrats into their prostitutes and rip off the people. Honest and competent people from all ethnic backgrounds should be chosen, then trained and then run the government.

But that phase comes after the state formation process in which it must never be forgotten that that community which struggled and sacrificed enormously to throw out the foreigners should have more say in matters of state formation, compared to those who sided with the oppressor to kill their own people and their neighbors. This is common sense, which is beyond the IQ of the “international community”.

A message to the Taliban

I extend my congratulations to the ghazis of the Emirates of Afghanistan and offer prayers of condolence for those mujahideen who became martyrs in their jihad against the oppressive, atrocious and cruel governments of the U.S. and its Western allies. In two centuries of humiliation against the Muslim world, you buried the British, Bolsheviks and Yankees in your mountains along with their empires.

The hardships you have suffered and the sacrifices you have rendered for the millat have produced a character in you that is worth being proud of. Now that you have successfully defeated the foreign occupation, lots more needs to be done. The world is already suggesting you to adopt a direction which will be disastrous for you in the long run. As a scholar who is familiar with the West and East Asia, as well as the various understandings of Islam within the Islamic civilization, perhaps I am in a position to make some humble suggestions that may prove useful in charting out your future.

First and foremost, the sword from your right hand can now shift into your left hand, and you will have to grab the pen in your right hand.

Your military resistance era is now over, but you still need to defend and develop your country. While your enemies are still planning to bomb you, their kinetic efforts will be supplemented by a mischievous hybrid war, for which you may not be fully prepared. Without the power of knowledge, this hybrid war cannot be won.

Your decades-long steadfastness comes from the principle of istiqamat (one of the nine principles of Pashtunwali). You were tortured, incarcerated and killed, but the enemy could neither buy you out with money, nor could they bludgeon you into submission over the last twenty years. This shows that you have basirat (ability to see beyond the apparent facades and false promises).

These are quintessential aspects of character, which are necessary prerequisites of a morally and spiritually upright leadership in statecraft. Basirat comes from tazkiyya-i-nafs (cleansing of the soul), which in turn comes from austerity and being strict with yourself and generous with others. This too, you proved after you gave general amnesty to all who fought against you, even though it would have been perfectly Islamic to demand retribution as was done by the Nuremberg trials conducted by the victors of WWII.

Bear in mind that movements start with great spirit which wanes over time because the adherents recede into their comfort zones, become complacent and are finally overcome by the forces of evil that always lurk behind the shadows. Afghanistan will soon become one of the world’s richest countries under your leadership. Make sure that your peoples’ needs are met and they have moderate prosperity, or else excessive riches will make your population fat, lazy and coward like the Gulf Arabs.

The last big wave of Western oppression came to Afghanistan after 9/11. This wave will take about 2-4 more years to finally wane and subside permanently. When it wanes, like a tsunami it will take many unwanted bad things from your neighborhood also. Even though you do not want to transform your neighbors, many of us are already beginning to be transformed by your victory. The Kashmiri movement, the Khalistan independence movement, the Palestine movement, and the movement against corruption in Pakistan are already drawing inspiration from your victory against forces of oppression.

Islam does not accommodate secular liberal political philosophy, from the womb of which the modern democratic fraud was born. Steer clear of it. Modernist Muslims will tell you that the concept of Shura is democracy. It is not. Shura is not Western style democracy, but a system of consultation prevalent at all tiers of society, from the realm of the family to the state. Use that at every level, as you have during your resistance years.

How to deal with the big powers

The governments of Western countries were your enemies. They occupied you, spilled your blood, and destroyed regional peace. You may forgive them, but do not forget. It is best to do aggressive diplomacy at the moment, but under no circumstances should you deal with them with clemency. They do not deserve it. Starve if you have to, but do not yield to these forces. Apply the law of Pashtunwali and Shariah in dealing with them.

You say that Pakistan is your second home. If you form your government according to Islamic principles, it will eventually become a part of your first home. Afghanistan is not a nation. It is a territory that comprises many nations. Pakistan is not a nation either. It is a union of four big nationalities and a few smaller ones. It too came about in the name of Islamic values but its corrupt and westernized elites forgot the original mission. So many Pashtuns, Hazaras and Tajiks came to Pakistan successively through various wars and made it their home. You can too, not as a refugee, but as confederated citizen.

Both Afghanistan and Pakistan have learnt that on matters of defense and foreign policy, both need to be on the same page, or else there will always be trouble. If we do integrate defense and foreign policy, the economic control of your resources can remain in the Afghan hands just as the economic control of Pakistani resources may remain in the Pakistani hands.

This will only work for the short run. But since you are landlocked, you need to have access to the Pakistani territory in a way that Pakistan doesn’t need access to your territory. However, since trade with landlocked Central Asia is paramount, you can allow access to Pakistan to have access to Central Asia through which a one-sided dependency will turn into co-dependency, which will be better for both countries. Moreover, consider the following very important point.

Afghanistan is approximately 653,000 sq km, out of which arable land is only a little less than 12%, amounting to 78,360 sq km. One sq km has 247 acres. In the U.S. one acre feeds about 1-2 people. In Afghanistan, if one acre fed 10-15 people, then you can only feed less than 2 million people out of a population of approximately 38 million. The other 36 million have to be fed from Pakistan, because it is the cheapest source of surplus wheat. Pakistan’s 882,000 sq km has more than 40 percent arable land and it produces surplus wheat and rice.

You need Pakistan for your access to the sea, food security and building up a modern defense capability. If you keep practicing Afghan nationalism, and Pakistan also keeps practicing Uncle Tom’s backward ideologies from the bygone days of European enlightenment, both will remain adversaries. Pakistan will remain poor and you will starve to death. By the time you dig your resources and sell them for food and building infrastructure, you will keep indebting the Afghan people.

Pair up and partner up with Pakistan’s various sectors, except your politics. If you pledge your politics with Pakistan, we will let you down. Until a fully awake political elite comes into life in Pakistan, you should stay away. If and when it happens, then integrate with Pakistan as closely as possible.

You are most likely to produce an Iran-type of social space in the beginning. But make sure not to follow the Saudi model, because it is utterly un-Islamic. Remember, Muslim women have led armies of men in our history. We produced female scholars before any other civilization could do so. We even produced female sultanas before anywhere else.

However, since the last half a century, Afghanistan saw no peace, and women’s predicament, similar to men was focused on survival only. So, your current policy regarding women in Afghanistan is realistic enough for a conservative, warn-torn Pashtun society.

Others do not share the same outlook. Stick to Islamic injunctions and protect your women. Disallow man-hating feminist ideologies to protect the family unit. There should be enough freedom for our women. Our wellbeing depends on the wellbeing of our mothers, sisters, daughters and wives. Resist all pressure from abroad on this account and gradually re-engineer society in which women will be modest but fully participating in our civilizational and national lives.

From the point of view of food security, revisit the Islamic position on population control. Family size now should be smaller than the days of war. In two generations, manageable population size in Afghanistan should be below 20 million, as in the case of Pakistan, which should drop from 220 million to 150 million.

1 of many comments:

amarynth on September 23, 2021 · at 7:23 pm EST/EDT

Pepe Escobar
@RealPepeEscobar
·
9h
CONFIRMED.

This letter, published as an article, has reached Suhail Shaheen, the Taliban-appointed ambassador to the UN and until recently their Doha-based spokesman.

https://twitter.com/RealPepeEscobar/sta ... 9160793091

https://thesaker.is/a-letter-to-the-taliban/

~~~

moonofalabama
(embedded links)

To Disparage Taliban NYT, CNN Quote Hoax Twitter Account, Create Fake Story

September 28, 2021

Gareth Porter has described how Corporate media stirred global terror hysteria to push postwar hostility toward new Afghan govt:
Following the Taliban’s victory over the U.S. military, U.S. corporate media has churned out a new narrative about the imminent threat of terrorism from Afghanistan that sets the stage for future military interventions. Blasted out in a stunningly disciplined fashion, the media has demonstrated as clearly as ever its coordination with the national security state and advancements of its interests.

The badmouthing of the Taliban government continues.

Today the New York Times as well as CNN ran a fake story intended to put the Taliban into a bad light:
New Taliban Chancellor Bars Women From Kabul University

Tightening the Taliban’s restrictions on women, the group’s new chancellor for Kabul University announced on Monday that women would be indefinitely banned from the institution either as instructors or students.

“I give you my words as chancellor of Kabul University,” Mohammad Ashraf Ghairat said in a Tweet on Monday. “As long as a real Islamic environment is not provided for all, women will not be allowed to come to universities or work. Islam first.”

The new university policy echoes the Taliban’s first time in power, in the 1990s, when women were only allowed in public if accompanied by a male relative and would be beaten for disobeying, and were kept from school entirely.

Image

Image
The CNN story, published later, says:
"As long as real Islamic environment is not provided for all, women will not be allowed to come to universities or work. Islam first," Mohammad Ashraf Ghairat said on his official Twitter account.

When I read the NYT story this morning I checked the account and found that its was an unverified account, created this month under the name of the new chancellor of Kabul University. The account had curiously used mostly English in its tweets and seemed unusual rough in its wording. The tweet in question, which the NYT quoted incomplete, started with "Folks!"

Something with the account was obviously off so I checked a bit more. It soon turned out that several Afghans had immediately pointed out that the account is a hoax and that the whole story thereby fake...
continues: https://www.moonofalabama.org/2021/09/t ... count.html


~~~

Paul Jay & Abby Martin on Afghanistan and 9/11

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHwi1k2zpzE (46 min.)
Transcript

theAnalysis-news
• Sep 27, 2021 •

In an episode of the Empire Files podcast, Abby interviews Paul about his investigation into the 9/11 attacks, his experiences in Afghanistan, and his interviews with climate scientists.
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Re: Obama: send 15,000 more troops to Afghanistan

Postby Elvis » Fri Oct 01, 2021 6:24 pm

conniption wrote:A Letter to the Taliban

Dr. Ejaz Akram


That letter is excellent, thanks for posting.


Double-ditto this:

conniption wrote:To Disparage Taliban NYT, CNN Quote Hoax Twitter Account, Create Fake Story


I'd love to know who set up the fake Twitter account. And how the NY Times "reporters" learned of it.
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Re: Obama: send 15,000 more troops to Afghanistan

Postby conniption » Wed Oct 06, 2021 7:28 pm

How did I know this?


The Intercept

Image
Afghans hoping to gain entry to the Hamid Karzai International Airport are contained by fighters from the notorious CIA-backed paramilitary unit known as 01, in Kabul on Aug. 24, 2021. Photo: Andrew Quilty

The CIA’s Afghan Proxies, Accused of War Crimes, Will Get a Fresh Start in the U.S.

The agency prioritized the evacuation of Zero unit members and their families even as many vulnerable U.S. employees and human rights activists were left behind.

Andrew Quilty, Matthew Cole
October 5 2021

Before the Taliban took control of Kabul in August, the U.S.-backed Afghan commandos known as Zero units were the ghosts of the Afghan battlefield. Along with their CIA advisers, they were feared and, in recent years, virtually invisible.

But in the hectic, violent weeks between the Taliban victory and the U.S. military withdrawal, fighters belonging to a Zero unit known as 01 — and other linked militias known collectively as National Strike Units, or NSUs — helped the Americans secure Hamid Karzai International Airport. Firing warning shots day and night, 01 fighters sought to corral and search crowds of Afghans and foreigners trying to enter the airport to board evacuation flights, much as Taliban fighters struggled to maintain control at other airport entrances around the same time.

One evening in late August, an Afghan 01 commander whose fighters were guarding the airport’s northwestern gate asked an Intercept journalist taking photographs to identify himself to the fighter’s American handler. The handler, who was wearing a baseball cap and had a pistol strapped to his waist, suggested that if the journalist wanted to leave on an evacuation flight, he should do so immediately. Soon, the man said, he’d be evacuating “my guys,” referring to the 01 fighters. After that, the gate would be closed for good. The American then turned to the 01 commander and explained the value placed on a free press by citizens of the country to which he and his fighters would soon be flown.

The CIA prioritized the evacuation of Zero unit members from Afghanistan, flying out as many as 7,000 of the former commandos and their relatives even as thousands of vulnerable former U.S. government and military employees, human rights activists, and aid workers were left behind. NSU commandos refused to allow a former U.S. government interpreter through the airport gates unless she gave them $5,000 each for herself, her husband, and their three children, Al Jazeera reported. The woman, who said she and her relatives were beaten by NSU members at the airport, could not afford the bribe. Two former members of a different U.S.-trained military unit, the Afghan National Army’s KKA, or Afghan Special Unit, told The Intercept from a safe house in Kabul that no formal effort was made to evacuate them and that unit members who were able to board flights did so through personal connections. The two former members themselves had been turned away by 01 militiamen after approaching the airport’s northwestern gate. Since then, they said, at least four KKA members have been tracked down by Taliban fighters and killed.

The CIA’s ability to evacuate its allies appears to have far outstripped that of other U.S. government entities and signals its pivotal role in the war. The agency evacuated as many as 20,000 Afghan “partners” and their relatives, the Washington Post reported, nearly one-third of the 60,000 Afghans the U.S. has taken in overall. The CIA did not respond to a request for comment.

Most coverage of the CIA’s efforts has been laudatory. But the Zero units were known for deadly night raids that killed an untold number of civilians across Afghanistan. The Intercept documented 10 raids conducted by 01 in Wardak Province, southwest of Kabul, in which at least 51 civilians, including children, were killed — many at close range, in execution-style assaults. Most 01 missions were led by a small number of CIA “advisers,” as their Afghan fighters knew them, or U.S. special forces borrowed from the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command.

“The U.S. should not be offering safe haven to those who committed war crimes or serious human rights abuses,” said Patricia Gossman, associate director for the Asia division at Human Rights Watch, who wrote a report on the units’ abuses. “In Afghanistan, these forces were never held accountable for their actions, which included summary executions and other abuses. The U.S. and any other countries resettling members of these units should screen arrivals and investigate any for their possible involvement in human rights violations.”

Most of the Zero unit members were flown to Qatar, where CIA paramilitary officers worked to get their former Afghan colleagues sent to the U.S., according to a former senior U.S. intelligence official with direct knowledge of the operation. The former Afghan commandos are being housed on U.S. military bases, including two in Virginia and New Jersey, and at Ramstein Air Base in Germany while they await resettlement, according to the former senior U.S. official, two former senior Afghan intelligence officials, and a former commando from a different Afghan unit who was evacuated to the same U.S. base as some Zero unit members. Another small group of Zero unit members is in the United Arab Emirates, but they are expected to come to the U.S. within weeks, one of the former Afghan officials told The Intercept. Both former Afghan officials said they have spoken with relatives who previously belonged to the Zero units and are now in the United States.

Once known within the U.S. government as the Mohawks, Zero units started as an irregular commando force controlled by the CIA. The intelligence agency trained the teams to serve as guerrilla fighters out of small U.S. outposts, mainly in the north and east of the country, near the Pakistan border. Much of the original purpose of the program was to enable the CIA to conduct cross-border raids into Pakistan, a politically fraught and rarely approved activity for U.S. personnel.

The Zero units allowed the U.S. to conduct deniable operations and avoid accountability ... continues... https://theintercept.com/2021/10/05/zer ... n-taliban/


"The Zero units allowed the U.S. to conduct deniable operations and avoid accountability ..." Seems to be what we're best at.
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