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Chris J. Karr's avatar

"But let’s say that Biden ordered the U.S. to leave Afghanistan without any agreement in place with the Taliban—do you think that these prisoners would have remained in prison after the U.S. was gone and the Taliban took over?"

They would have not remained in prison, but letting them loose to rejoin their Taliban brethren was pretty damn stupid as well, and could only serve to hasten the fall of the Afghan gov't:

"According to one high-ranking National Directorate of Security (NDS) official I met within Kabul’s presidential palace four days before the capital crumbled earlier this month, more than 80 percent of the freed Taliban commenced either combat or planning operations with the group."

"Two days before Kabul fell, another well-placed Afghan military leader told me the figure was even higher — closer to almost all, except those too old to fight. They are believed to have taken on other jobs within the structure."

"'This had a really bad impact on us. We lost our brothers and friends to arrest them, only to be told that the government had to release them,' he noted. 'So many came back to fight us again, and in a number of the ones we killed, we found their jail papers on them with the identification.'"

"Moreover, one of the most prolific Taliban fighters and leaders — Mawlawi Talib — was freed as part of the infamous 2020 prison exodus. Talib, previously Helmand’s 'shadow governor,' was arrested by Afghan security forces at a checkpoint in 2020 but allowed back on the streets within months, an NDS official said. In August, he masterminded a horrific attack on Lashkargah, the capital of Helmand province."[1]

"It doesn’t matter how many speeches President Biden gives. They will never ring true, because Biden is promulgating lies. The same kinds of lies we heard about Benghazi in 2012 are now back in the White House. Maybe this time, we will learn not to listen."

I know that this situation allows you to revert to form with respect to Biden bashing - bashing which I've joined in as well - but if you want to talk about lies and you skip back to Benghazi in order to make this a partisan snipe hunt, I'll point out that these kinds of lies NEVER left the White House, so pretending that they're back after an absence is either extreme tunnel vision, or an easily refuted talking point that's not worth making.

From Mike Pompeo in 2020[2]:

"For the first time, [they] have announced that they’re prepared to break with their historic ally, al-Qaeda. … The [Taliban] gentleman whom I met with agreed that they would break that relationship and that they would work alongside of us to destroy, deny resources to and have al-Qaeda depart from that place."

By all means, let's extract our pounds of flesh from Joe Biden and his botched retreat from Afghanistan, but let's not be blinkered enough to imply that this would have been (or will be) any better under any administration that the GOP would have in office now.

[1] https://nypost.com/2021/08/24/how-prisoner-releases-bolstered-the-taliban-to-victory/

[2] https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/transcript-mike-pompeo-on-face-the-nation-march-1-2020/

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Steve Berman's avatar

Both side-ism won’t make Biden’s coverup any less of a lie.

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SGman's avatar

The likelihood is that Trump, if he had been reelected, would have been out in May without evacuating anywhere near the number of people the Biden admin did.

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Steve Berman's avatar

Speculation. It’s possible. Look what Trump did to the Kurds for example. But Trump is just unpredictable enough to give the Taliban pause. I can’t say it would have been as bad as Biden. I can say it could not have been much worse.

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SGman's avatar

Yes, based on previous/current statements of Trump admin and actions taken under the Doha agreement.

We got 124k people out: it could have been less than 10k. That strikes me as much worse.

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Bill Pearson's avatar

It's an interesting take after Dave's column yesterday Steve. I've been critical of Biden for how he handled this but i would hardly rely on RedState for my source. I did try and find out if anyone with a real news worthy organization was digging deeper, but didn't have much luck. And let's be realistic, if this is true, there's no way legitimate media types can ignore it.

So my question to you is, was Dave blowing smoke up our ass yesterday? Were they telling American's to get out as early as March? If so, what was the logic of not leaving? What happened to the party of personal responsibility? For real brother, how many of the Afghans should we have removed? Several American's with dual citizenship were there, were we responsible pulling out their entire extended families. Taking out 1 or 2 people is easy, taking out the entire extended family of 25 is another? Same thing with those that helped us, the extended family or just the person, spouse and kids?

It is interesting to revisit Bengahazi; what were there, 8 senate hearings? And, if this is true about not blowing up the suicide bomber, kick his ass out of office and bring us Harris and Pelosi. Hell that's what you guys were claiming all along. Might as well just go there now.

Finally, on a more somber note, i just saw the number of covid19 deaths in Georgia yesterday was 130 compared to California's 147. With a quarter of the population seems to me all of you writing from the great state of Georgia ought to be more focused on local news like the rampaging covid cases, but what the hell, Joe's an easier target than what is happening next door to you. Yup, just being snarky.

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Curtis Stinespring's avatar

Snarky is ok. The tides ebb and flood. Between 07/15/2021 and 08/24/2021 Georgia's Covid deaths were near zero. The California Covid deaths in the same period were about 40 per day.

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Scott C.'s avatar

The good thing about The Racket News is it allows people to see firsthand the difference between someone who actually looks at things critically and without rancor(David) and someone who is a partisan windbag(Steve) who will do anything to make the other side look bad.

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Chris J. Karr's avatar

Could you imagine the chaos on April 1, should the two of them simply exchange bylines for a day to mess with us? :-)

Keep up the good work, David and Steve!

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Steve Berman's avatar

Rats! You spoiled our plan!

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Chris J. Karr's avatar

I have a short memory, so your plan's still intact.

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Steve Berman's avatar

Hahaha just because you agree more with David.

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Scott C.'s avatar

You quoted Redstate.

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Steve Berman's avatar

Yep. I don’t do it often but I did. I noted “if true.” They’re not Breitbart. I also quoted the New York Times, who have been caught red-handed and unapologetically making stuff up. You know, even David writes for The First, which is about as Trumpy as you can find. Just because something is in RedState doesn’t automatically make it false.

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Chris J. Karr's avatar

Before everyone gets hung up on RedState's credentials, it's worth noting that RS is simply repeating what was being reported on Univision:

https://twitter.com/BonillaJL/status/1432776611510767617

You can leave RS out of it completely and debate the credibility of Univision (where this aired) and former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Roger Pardo-Maurer, who made the claims.

No need to litigate the "truthiness" of RS's journalism when they're playing journalistic telephone here and we know who the source is.

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Steve Berman's avatar

I mean yeah. I published the source.

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Bill Pearson's avatar

And it's not just RS Chris, the other 'source" Flag Officers 4 America" are the same bunch that wrote the letter claiming the election was stolen. Nailed that didn't they?

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Scott C.'s avatar

Yeah, Steve saw something on a lunatic site and ran with it. Anytime your source is an insurrectionist you would think someone would think twice about linking it. We know Redstate wouldn't they are all in on the stolen election junk but Steve likes to pretend he is rational when he isn't. At all.

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Steve Berman's avatar

So there’s 130 lunatic flag officers. Sad actually. We deserve to be overtaken by Visigoths.

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Bill Pearson's avatar

Actually i enjoy reading Steve, most of the time. He does tend to drift in and out of lucidity from time to time. I attribute that to perhaps reading EE in the morning and getting all twisted up. Now days i just delete EE's emails, i suspect a man who said hell no to trump when he won and hell yes when he lost would indeed be conflicted by his demons. Hence his (EE's) rantings.

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LETECIA's avatar

Yes!!!!!

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