On Afghanistan
Taliban leader was freed from Guantanamo Bay in 2014 swap by Obama
The New York Post reported in a 16 August 2021 article that the new leader of the Taliban was freed by Obama in the trade for the traitorous Bowe Bergdahl.
When then-President Barack Obama released five Taliban commanders from the Guantanamo Bay prison in exchange for an American deserter in 2014, he assured a wary public the dangerous enemy combatants would be transferred to Qatar and kept from causing any trouble in Afghanistan.
In fact, they were left free to engineer Sunday’s sacking of Kabul.
Soon after gaining their freedom, some of the notorious Taliban Five pledged to return to fight Americans in Afghanistan and made contacts with active Taliban militants there. But the Obama-Biden administration turned a blind eye to the disturbing intelligence reports, and it wasn’t long before the freed detainees used Qatar as a base to form a regime in exile.
Eventually, they were recognized by Western diplomats as official representatives of the Taliban during recent “peace” talks.
Earlier this year, one of them, Khairullah Khairkhwa, actually sat across the table from President Biden’s envoy to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, in Moscow, where Khairkhwa was part of the official Taliban delegation that negotiated the final terms of the US withdrawal. The retreat cleared a path for the Taliban to retake power after 20 years.
“I started jihad to remove foreign forces from my country and establish an Islamic government, and jihad will continue until we reach that goal through a political agreement,” Khairkhwa said at the summit.
After raiding the presidential palace in Kabul, a group of armed Taliban fighters told Al Jazeera that they were arranging to bring back their Gitmo-paroled leadership from Qatar upon securing the capital. One unidentified fighter, who blasted America for “oppressing our people for 20 years,” claimed he had also been locked up at the Guantanamo Bay facility. It’s more evidence Gitmo catch-and-release policies facilitated the fall of Afghanistan to the enemy Washington vowed to crush after 9/11.
(Read more at the New York Post)
When the Biden’s “Tal-e-ban” attacks in whatever new way they will, we can blame Obama and Biden
Hopefully, the two of these men will be around to be held accountable for their actions.
Of course, what could go wrong when the head of the new Afghanistan was imprisoned at Gitmo, was the right-hand man to Osama bin Laden, and still vows jihad? What could go wrong when taqiyya has been employed against the Biden regime? What could go wrong since we have many people coming over from Afghanistan and an open Southern border for months? What could go wrong when we left numerous guns and ammunitions at Bagram?
…
Just to show how the Taliban kept their promises, the current leader of the Taliban was supposed to remain in Omar when released
The Military Times outlined the conditions for the release of those freed from Gitmo in a 30 October 2018 article that also defined the terms of exchange for the traitorous Bowe Bergdahl.
Five members of the Afghan Taliban who were freed from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay in exchange for captured American Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl have joined the insurgent group’s political office in Qatar, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said Tuesday.
They will now be among Taliban representatives negotiating for peace in Afghanistan, a sign some negotiators in Kabul say indicates the Taliban’s desire for a peace pact.
Others fear the five, all of whom were close to the insurgent group’s founder and hard-line leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, bring with them the same ultra-conservative interpretation of Islam that characterized the group’s five-year rule that ended in 2001 with the U.S.-led invasion.
“The Taliban are bringing back their old generation, which means the Taliban have not changed their thinking or their leadership,” said Haroun Mir, political analyst in the Afghan capital. “What we are more worried about is if tomorrow the Taliban say ‘we are ready to negotiate,’ who will represent Kabul? That is the big challenge because the government is so divided, not just ideologically but on ethnic lines.”
Efforts to find a peaceful end to Afghanistan’s protracted war have accelerated since Washington appointed Afghan-American Zalmay Khalilzad as envoy to find a peaceful end to America’s longest war, which has already cost the U.S. more than $900 billion.
But Mohammed Ismail Qasimyar, a member of a government peace council, warned Washington against negotiating peace terms with the Taliban, saying Khalilzad’s only job is to set the stage for direct talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban, something the insurgents have so far refused, calling the government a U.S. puppet.
Taliban officials reported meeting with Khalilzad in Qatar earlier this month, calling the exchange preliminary but pivotal. Washington neither confirmed nor denied the meeting, but Khalilzad was in Qatar at the time.
A Taliban official familiar with the discussions told The Associated Press that talks ended with an agreement to meet again. Key among the Taliban’s requests was recognition of their Qatar office, said the official, who spoke on condition he not be identified because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
In an unexpected development, Pakistan also bowed to a long-standing Afghan Taliban demand that it release its senior leader, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, who had been in jail in Pakistan since 2010. At the time, Baradar was reportedly jailed after bypassing Pakistan to open independent peace talks with Hamid Karzai, who was then Afghanistan’s president.
Baradar’s release followed Khalilzad’s first visit to Pakistan since being appointed Washington’s peace envoy.
Baradar issued an audio message after his release to the Taliban. The Pashto-language message, heard by an Associated Press reporter, seemed to indicate he was preparing for a role in the insurgent movement moving forward.
Hakim Mujahed, a former Taliban member who is now also a member of the Afghan government peace council, said the presence of the five former Guantanamo prisoners in the Taliban’s Qatar office is indicative of the Taliban’s resolve to find a peace deal. He said the stature of the five within the insurgent movement will make a peace deal palatable to the rank and file, many of whom have resisted talks believing a military victory was within their grasp.
(Read more at the Military Times)
Of course, it is called “taqiyya”
The practice of taqiyya should be expected when dealing with Islam. However, it should not be excused (as the Biden regime seems all too willing to do).
…
The unraveling of Afghanistan, Biden: “I stand behind my decision”
The Christian Broadcasting Network reported in part through a 16 August 2021 article how Biden tore apart a land we had to leave.
America’s 20-year war in Afghanistan is coming to a chaotic end. The Taliban has seized control of the capital of Kabul, effectively completing its campaign to take back the country.
Now that emergency evacuations are underway, President Ashraf Ghani has fled, and despite two decades of training and trillions in funding, Afghan security forces collapsed without a fight.
“We gave them every tool they could need. We paid their salaries, provided for the maintenance of their air force, something the Taliban doesn’t have. The Taliban doesn’t have an air force. We provided air support. We gave them every chance to determine their own future. What we could not provide them, was the will to fight for their future,” President Biden said addressing the nation on Monday.
The president said he inherited the deal from the Trump administration and didn’t see an option besides to abide by it.
Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tells CBN News that what we’re seeing today is not what the Trump administration negotiated.
“They decided to pull out the military before they got civilians out. They hadn’t adequately planned. And in terms of the agreement, the Taliban clearly broke the agreement and President Trump was unequivocally clear, you break the agreement, and we will come and break you,” Pompeo said.
Critics call Afghanistan Biden’s, “Saigon Moment.” Scenes of Chinook helicopters evacuating U.S. personnel from the now-shuttered embassy, eerily similar to what took place at the end of the Vietnam War.
The situation, this morning, from the Kabul Airport, was chaotic and heartbreaking. Thousands surging the tarmac, desperate to get out of the country.
As many as 7,000 U.S. troops are now en route or in Afghanistan working to evacuate American embassy personnel, Afghan interpreters, their families, and others who helped the U.S. military.
“If they attack our personnel or disrupt our operation, the U.S. presence will be swift and the response will be swift and forceful,” Biden said Monday.
Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle want to know what went wrong and who’s to blame.
(Read more at the Christian Broadcasting Network)
This is total bull. There is nothing (including the agreement that Trump made with the Taliban) that Biden has followed.
Biden has not held to the “Stay in Mexico” agreement Trump made. He has not held to the timetable that was included in the Trump/Taliban agreement.
I dare anyone to find any point where Biden has abided with a Trump agreement except those where he was forced to do so by the courts. Even when told by the Supreme Court that he could not extend his eviction moratorium, he sat with hands folded in agreement as his CDC took on new powers not spelled out in any document and declared an extension of the eviction moratorium.
Not only has Biden never followed any Trump plan, he has gone (in every case) as quickly against it as he could.
…
Former CENTCOM commander says US “may have underestimated” Taliban’s “planning capabilities”
The Washington Examiner comments on the miscalculations of the Biden administration.
The Taliban’s successful military operations this week may have come because the United States “underestimated” the group’s “planning capabilities,” according to one former CENTCOM commander.
Former U.S. CENTCOM commander Gen. Joseph Votel told the Washington Examiner in an interview that he has been “very, very surprised” by the “speed” with which the Taliban has captured 14 of Afghanistan’s 34 provincial capitals as well as Kandahar and Herat.
“From my personal belief, some of the more far-flung areas, I think we would have expected that they would have fallen faster, but big cities like Kandahar and other things like that are very, very concerning in terms of that,” the distinguished senior fellow on national security at MEI said. “And so, I think I’m very, very surprised by that. So, it’s not a good situation.”
While he acknowledged that the U.S. expected the Taliban to strike with the withdrawal coming up, one miscalculation the Pentagon may have made was in its evaluation of the group’s planning abilities.
“We may have underestimated the planning capability of the Taliban to really orchestrate what it seems to be a fairly effective campaign to get control of border crossings, of big cities, and to create a lot of pressure and induce panic into the end of the situation,” Votel added.
The Taliban is attempting to “isolate” Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, though the Pentagon does not believe they are “in an imminent threat environment,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told reporters at Friday’s briefing.
The Biden administration has repeatedly touted the Afghan forces’ advantages over the Taliban, such as in aviation and in numbers, though that has not demonstrated itself on the battlefields. U.S. officials also say the key is for Afghan leaders to step up.
(Read more at the Washington Examiner)
Substitute “Obama” and “Democrats/PC Army” with “US”
Any of those who Obama forced out due to an opposition to including transgenderism in the military would know that the forcing of liberalism (especially anti-masculine, pro-gay, pro-feminine types of liberalism) on Islamic societies would fail. However, Obama and the Democrats did not see it.
…
Biden finds himself in an impossible bind as Afghanistan blame game begins
The Guardian comments on the whining and excuse-making that seems to be ramping up in the Biden regime.
The words of political leaders can come back to haunt them. “None whatsoever, zero,” Joe Biden said last month when asked if he saw any parallels between the US withdrawals from Vietnam and Afghanistan.
“The Taliban is not the North Vietnamese army. They’re not remotely comparable in terms of capability. There’s going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of the embassy of the United States from Afghanistan. It is not at all comparable.”
The dispatch of 3,000 extra US troops to help evacuate embassy staff looks like a pre-emptive move to avoid such a humiliating spectacle. Even so, with the Taliban on the march and closing in on Kabul, it did not stop cable news networks on Friday replaying grainy images from Vietnam nor the rightwing New York Post running the front page headline “Biden’s Saigon”.
A blame game away is under way for an issue that defies finger pointing, simple headlines or strident certainty perhaps more than any other. Biden is only the latest American president to stumble into a hall of mirrors where every argument has a counter-argument, every action has a reaction, no escape route is offered and the only guarantee is that Afghan civilians will lose.
His political career spans Afghanistan’s modern era. He became a US senator in 1973, the year that the country’s last king, Mohammad Zahir Shah, was deposed after a four-decade reign that coincided with one of the most peaceful periods in the country’s history.
Biden remained in the Senate when Ronald Reagan backed the mujahideen against the occupying Soviet Union and George W Bush ousted the Taliban after 9/11. As Barack Obama’s vice-president, Biden believed the conflict had gone on too long but was overruled, even after the killing of Osama bin Laden in neighbouring Pakistan.
Now, as president, Biden has ripped off the bandage, determining that the 20-year war is unwinnable, that counter-terrorism priorities lie elsewhere and that the US does not have a multi-generational obligation for nation-building. Polls show his decision to withdraw US forces by the end of the month has massive support from the public, not least among sceptics of American imperialism.
Even so, Biden, renowned for his empathy, is about to be confronted by images of atrocities and human suffering that are a direct consequence of his actions. It is true that “the buck stops here”. But is also true that there are myriad causes dating back at least half a century that are painfully difficult to disentangle.
(Read more at The Guardian)
Make no mistake, this problem is completely of Democrat doing
Just like the pallet of cash to the Islamic sponsor of terror, this is Biden’s gift to the Taliban.
…
Biden’s words haunt him: He said a month ago there’s “no circumstance where Americans will be lifted out of the U.S. embassy in Kabul by helicopter”
The Daily Mail points out how either Biden planned for Afghanistan to fail so spectacularly that no Americans would survive or he was too dumb to see the results of his own actions.
- Biden said on July 8: ‘There’s going to be no circumstance where you’re going to see people being lifted off the roof of a embassy of the U.S. from Afghanistan’
- Just five weeks later, exactly that happened as Americans were evacuated from the U.S. Embassy in Kabul as the Taliban breached the capital city
- He also said during a news conference last month that a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan was not inevitable upon the total troop withdrawal
- Now, the president is trying to divert blame to Donald Trump
- Biden blamed his predecessor for the Taliban being able to swiftly seize most of Afghanistan in just over a week and reached Kabul by Sunday
- Shortly after that the embassy was evacuated and the flag taken down and Americans were told to shelter in place as the airport came under attack
- Trump claimed Biden made the Taliban not fear America’s power
- ‘Joe Biden gets it wrong every time on foreign policy, and many other issues,’ he wrote. ‘Everyone knew he couldn’t handle the pressure’
- Biden is sending 5,000 troops to help with the evacuation of U.S. and ally personnel still in Afghanistan
Joe Biden insisted last month that there’s no way his troop withdrawal from Afghanistan would lead to a Saigon-like situation with Americans emergency evacuated out of the U.S. embassy in Kabul by helicopter.
‘There’s going to be no circumstance where you’re going to see people being lifted off the roof of a (sic) embassy of the United States from Afghanistan,’ the president said during a press conference on July 8, 2021.
Biden insisted during that press conference that the U.S. would not succumb to the Taliban once troops were withdrawn and is now trying to divert blame for the takeover on Donald Trump.
Those words are coming back to bite the president after the majority of Afghanistan fell to the Taliban in just under a week and the U.S. Embassy in Kabul was forced to evacuate by helicopter once the militant forces breached the city on Sunday.
‘Is the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan now inevitable?’ a reporter asked the president at the time of the July 8 press conference.
‘No, it is not,’ Biden responded.
He explained: ‘You have the Afghan troops at 300,000 – well equipped, as well as any army in the world – and an Air Force, against something like 75,000 Taliban. It is not inevitable.’
He also said at the same press conference ‘that is not true’ that his own intelligence community was warning the Afghan government will likely collapse if there was a total and swift withdrawal.
(Read more at the Daily Mail)
Bookmark this page for future reference
This should become useful in 2022 — especially if there is a major attack on anything American by the Taliban.
…
Taliban parade new weapons seized from Afghan military as U.S. withdraws
NBC News points to both Biden’s promise that Taliban would not win and how the Taliban now has captured U.S. weapons left by Joe Biden.
The Taliban have showed off containers full of weapons and military hardware seized from the Afghan military as American forces withdraw from the country and the militants march across the country.
The weaponry includes 900 guns, 30 light tactical vehicles and 20 army pickup trucks, according to NBC News’ U.K. partner Sky News, which was granted access to the Sultan Khil military base in the Wardak province close to the Afghan capital, Kabul.
District after district has fallen to the Taliban. The militants have seized 120 districts since May 1, according to an ongoing assessment by the Long War Journal. The map is a moving patchwork, but at last count the Taliban controlled 193 districts and contested 130, while 75 were under the control of the government or are undetermined, according to the publication, which reports on the global war on terror and is a project of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a hawkish Washington think tank.
At the same time, many military outposts have been surrendered without a fight, allowing the Taliban to seize weapons, according to multiple Afghan military and government sources.
Sky News filmed fighters carrying new weapons seized from the base, where a white flag signifying the Taliban takeover was flying.
Walking around wooden boxes full of munitions — some still wrapped in plastic and Styrofoam — Taliban commander Mutman Ehsanulla told Alex Crawford of Sky News that the seizure had won them a slew of new weapons that could be used on the battlefield. Still, he repeated a Taliban talking point that it isn’t the militants who are behind a recent upsurge in violence.
“All people want peace here,” Ehsanulla said. “But the government doesn’t want peace with us.”
A surge of violence, including attacks on intellectuals, journalists and prominent women, has heightened anxiety about what the future holds in the battle-scarred country. The Taliban, which U.S. forces toppled in 2001 after the group sheltered Osama bin Laden, architect of the 9/11 attacks, have denied all responsibility for the attacks.
A recent United Nations report raised alarm about an “extraordinary levels of harm” inflicted on Afghans, with the Taliban responsible for more than 40 percent of all civilian casualties in the first three months of 2021. It said the Afghan National Army was responsible for 17 percent of all casualties during the same period.
Still, the Taliban has won the support of some Afghans who are weary after decades of war and of the U.S.-backed government in Kabul, which is widely accused of being riddled with corruption.
The Taliban resurgence is growing after months of largely fruitless peace talks between the military group and the Afghan government. With the Taliban growing stronger by the day, there are fears about the group’s willingness to cut any deals with the government in Kabul.
In April, President Joe Biden pledged to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan by Sept. 11, ending America’s longest war, which has claimed the lives of around 2,300 U.S. troops since 2001. From 2001 to 2018, some 58,000 Afghan military and police were killed in the violence, according to a study by Brown University.
But the withdrawal comes amid fears it could set the country on a path to a civil war, voiced by the U.S.’s top general in Afghanistan, Austin S. Miller, last week.
(Read more at NBC News)
This should be enough for a resignation of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and an impeachment
You cannot tell me that Biden did not plan this any more that Obama did not plan the secret pallets of cash flown to Iran. These weapons were gifted to the Taliban to be used to take down the Great Satan (and finish the job Obama started).
And don’t forget that we also gave them an Air Force (not just helicopters). However, in a true Bidenesque move, he also refused to let maintenance crews into the country.
Now that the Afghans now have independence from us, they can go to Iran (who has quite a lot of experience in fixing equipment from America).
…
On school safety
Biden’s equity agenda will make schools less safe
The Washington Examiner dissects the possible return to Obama’s PROMISE program that produced Nikolas Cruz (and 17 dead along with 17 injured at Parkland High School).
To comply with President Joe Biden’s racial equity executive order, the Departments of Justice and Education will likely reinstate, and possibly strengthen, Obama administration rules for public schools that judge student punishments by quantity rather than context. Mere numerical race disparities become de facto discrimination.
This puts teachers in a tenuous position. While American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten pushes a social justice agenda embracing critical race theory, she must also have the backs of members who will be judged by metrics portraying them as vicious racists. A union’s first obligation is protecting members who pay their dues. Weingarten risks becoming, as the woke folk say, “literally Hitler.”
Even though teaching is among the most woke vocations, applying statistics to race-neutral discipline policies will make monsters out of one of the White House’s most loyal and fervent constituencies. It will also spoil educational opportunities for innocent children this president says he deeply cares about.
The root problem is reliance on a disparate-impact approach to analyze student discipline. It essentially sets up racial quotas on how many members of a particular minority can receive appropriate punishment at a given school. This creates a death spiral for quality of life among large minority student bodies. When students are less likely to receive punishment for their misbehavior, students around them are affected.
Under this proposal, discipline means disparity, and disparity means discrimination. That’s what teachers and administrators want to avoid.
In the White House announcement of its intent to resurrect disciplinary quotas, it cited a report on such alleged disparities from the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. It failed to note this report was rebutted by Commissioner Gail L. Heriot. In her first dissent to a report in her 14 years of service on the commission, Heriot wrote that her colleagues “seriously misunderstood the empirical research that purportedly forms the basis for its conclusions.”
The commission’s report alleged students of color “do not commit more disciplinary offenses than their white peers.” But Heriot noted her colleagues “provide[d] no evidence to support this sweeping assertion and there is abundant evidence to the contrary” and that this “is a slap in the face to teachers.”
(Read more at the Washington Examiner)
Here again, Biden proves himself to be the third term of Obama
Forgetting the shootings created by his mentor’s program, Biden willy-nilly starts along the path of the PROMISE program.
…
On the release of criminals
Career criminal free on PR bond killed in shootout with police
Houston Fox affiliate KRIV reports that a liberal judge released a repeat criminal to get into a gun fight with police.
“He is a ticking time bomb of crime,” said Andy Kahan with Crime Stoppers.
What’s more eye-catching than the tattoo on 62-year-old Randal Boyd Burton’s forehead? His extraordinarily lengthy criminal history.
“17 felony convictions just in Harris County and there are others throughout the state,” Kahan said. “He just finished serving a two-year sentence for endangering a child.”
Last March, Burton got a felony cash bond for the delivery of a controlled substance.
Then in May, he was given a personal recognizance bond, also known as a get out of jail free card, by 351st Criminal District Court Judge Nata Cornelio.
The charge was aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.
“A felony PR bond on someone who has over 20 felony convictions, that made zero sense,” Kahan said.
On Sunday, deputies say Burton was caught shoplifting at the Walmart on Kuykendahl. Precinct 4 Constable deputies pulled over the car Burton was riding in.
“Our deputies were fired upon immediately when they got out on the guy,” said Precinct 4 Constable Mark Herman. “They returned fire to defend themselves and killed the suspect.”__
(Read more at KRIV)
This will dog Biden just like the recording of him responding to a “defund the police” point with “Yes”
During the 2020 campaign, Biden is recorded responding to Ady Barkan’s point of “We can reduce the responsibilities assigned to the police and redirect some of the funding for police into social services like mental health counseling and affordable housing.” with “Yes.”
Ever since that interview, Biden and the Democrats have denied their “defund the police” narrative. The truth is, though, their base is too wedded to the concept of releasing criminals to allow them to not stop it — no matter how many innocent people get killed.
…
Like this:
Like Loading...
The Biden administration is urging a federal judge not to issue any form of a report about potential flaws in the Dominion Voting Systems’ equipment used in Georgia, even though both sides in a court case over the machines want at least a version of the report to get out.
President Joe Biden on Tuesday acknowledged the likelihood that U.S. and allied sanctions on Russia in retaliation for an invasion of Ukraine would have significant blowback on the American economy, including possible price hikes and disruption to the nation’s energy supply.
Malik Faisal Akram, the British national who was killed Saturday night after allegedly taking four people hostage inside a Texas synagogue, spoke “repeatedly” about a convicted terrorist during negotiations with law enforcement, according to an FBI statement obtained by Fox News.
Republican lawmakers inundated President Joe Biden with more questions and critiques Tuesday as America awaited his appearance at press conference on Afghanistan, originally scheduled for noon Eastern but moved to over four hours later.
Taliban forces advancing in Ghazni, Kandahar, and other 
A person from Afghanistan on Britain’s no-fly list has accidentally been flown to Birmingham as part of the UK’s evacuation from the war-torn country, in a potential security breach.
“The likelihood that there’s going to be a Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely,” Joe Biden claimed in July.
It pays to be a woke, anti-racist lecturer.
The man who murdered ten people in a Boulder, Colorado supermarket Monday has been identified as a 
Mark 1:1 
You must be logged in to post a comment.