Obama Flack on MSNBC: Afghanistan 'Hasn’t
Quite Worked Out As We Thought'
Posted By: Dreadnought, 8/14/2021 12:44:54 AM
Rick Stengel, the former Time editor turned Obama State Department flack turned MSNBC analyst, appearing on Nicolle Wallace's show this afternoon and defending Biden on the Afghanistan fiasco, said: "It hasn’t quite worked out as we thought."Shades of Hirohito's surrender speech in 1945: “The war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan’s advantage.” Stengel made a couple of other appalling statements. He said, "What we’re seeing here is not an American tragedy, it is an Afghan tragedy." And he dismissed the rapidity of the collapse as just an "optical problem." In contrast, former Obama Defense Department official Mark Jacobson said, "the actions of the administration right now are a bit shameful.
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With Afghanistan on fire, the airport in chaos, and uncertainty on how all US personnel will make it out alive, the recriminations for what is still transpiring are in full swing. You’ll be less than shocked to learn that some are blaming Donald Trump, who hasn’t been president for the last seven months.
On the other hand, those living within the confines of our current reality are pointing the finger where it belongs, toward the current President of the United States. While Joe Biden had previously taken credit for his supposedly fabulous withdrawal plan, he’s now desperately trying to pass the buck, be it to Republicans or
The president of Afghanistan has reportedly fled the country, the United States flag was taken down at the embassy and secreted away with the ambassador, and throngs of people were seen on video desperately trying to climb into the back of American military cargo planes before takeoff with reports the airport was under fire from the Taliban. That’s the state President Biden left Afghanistan in and CNN’s Jake Tapper was out to hold him to account during Sunday’s State of the Union, thrashing Secretary of State Antony Blinken in the process.
Tapper came out of the gates on fire,
We’re seeing a tragedy happening in Afghanistan because of Joe Biden’s precipitous withdrawal without apparently any real preparation with the Afghan government or understanding the movement of the Taliban.
Now that the Taliban are moving into Kabul, we likely will not be able to save thousands of our allies who are now behind enemy lines. Hopefully, we’re able to get our own people out in time — even that may be a question now.
On Thursday, State Department spokesperson Ned Price talked about having “weeks” to get people out,
“Rarely has an American president’s predictions been so wrong, so fast, so convincingly as President Biden on Afghanistan,” begins Mike Allen’s Axios report on the imminent fall of the Afghan national government to the Taliban.
Just five weeks ago, Biden assured Americans “[T]he likelihood there’s going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely.” What made that prediction ludicrous even at the time was that his own generals had been telling him that there were very few reliable units in the Afghan army that could resist the Taliban. The endgame was always going to be played out swiftly
Joe Biden might just have secured his place as the most incompetent president of the United States in history, but Nancy Pelosi long ago secured her place as the most purposely divisive, partisan political hack to ever wield the Speaker’s gavel.
The detached-from-reality statement released by the 81-year-old Pelosi on Sunday praising Biden’s disastrous handling of the embarrassing “Escape from Afghanistan” merely secured her position in the top slot.
“The President is to be commended for the clarity of purpose of his statement on Afghanistan and the actions he has taken.”
While you’re letting that sink in
Today, as things further deteriorate in Afghanistan, a question popped into my head — where’s Kamala Harris? The vice president hasn’t spoken publicly since the chaos started, mimicking the disappearing act she pulled early in Joe Biden’s presidency. Over the past weeks, she’s been the subject of several hit pieces as well, likely sourced from within the White House.
What is her response to the disaster currently playing out?
Then Larry O’Connor reminded me of Harris’ statement back in April on the withdrawal, and I believe it’s going to be very relevant going forward, as Biden looks to shiv someone in the back to avoid blame.
Helicopters busily rescued personnel from the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Sunday, just weeks after President Joe Biden promised that there was “no circumstance” in which that spectacle, remembered from Vietnam, would recur.
Images of the evacuation of the U.S. embassy in Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) are seared into the American imagination as a memory of humiliating defeat, as U.S. promises of security for South Vietnam collapsed withOn July 8, Biden had the following exchange with a reporter after remarks on the upcoming withdrawal from Afghanistan:
Q Mr. President, some Vietnamese veterans see echoes
The Taliban has taken control of Afghanistan’s Jalalabad without a fight, according to officials and a resident, effectively leaving the capital, Kabul, as the last major urban area under government control.
The key eastern city, which is also the capital of Nangarhar province, fell early on Sunday morning. Its fall followed the Taliban’s seizure of the major northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif. The armed group posted photos online on Sunday showing its members in the governor’s office in Jalalabad.
“We woke up this morning to the Taliban white flags all over the city,” said resident Ahmad Wali, confirming the Taliban’s social media claim. “They entered without fighting,”
What will it take for Joe Biden to admit he is disastrously wrong about Afghanistan? The US leader struck a defiant pose last week. Sounding like a slightly desperate Olympics coach, he told Afghans it was their country. If they want it, they have to fight for it. In American politics-speak, this is called tough love. Without the love.
Biden has more hands-on foreign policy experience than any president since George HW Bush. That doesn’t mean he knows what he’s doing. Opinion polls suggest his abrupt Afghan withdrawal has majority public support. That doesn’t mean Americans will remain indifferent as the carnage and misery mount.
‘If the Taliban find me, they will kill
me and my family,’ says abandoned
Afghan interpreter 7 replies
me and my family,’ says abandoned
Afghan interpreter 7 replies
It’s been years since Haji and his wife have had a good night’s sleep.
“All night, my wife wakes up,” says Haji. “She’s scared. If [she hears] somebody is coming, she calls me, ‘Haji, someone is coming!’”
His wife says the first thing she does is hide the children.
“Then I get up and go to the door to see what is going on. If there are Taliban, I tell them no one is at home,” she says.
Haji’s English has become tentative since CNN first met him 10 years ago, during an embed with the US Marine Corps in Afghanistan. But his message cuts
Former CIA Director and retired Army general David Petraeus called the deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan "disastrous" and "catastrophic" -- not only for the U.S. but the world, in a Friday interview.
"This is an enormous national security setback and it is on the verge of getting much worse unless we decide to take really significant action," Petraeus told host Rita Cosby on "The Rita Cosby Show" on WABC Radio.
The former commander of U.S. and International Forces in Afghanistan described the domino effect that occurred once the U.S. pulled the bulk of its remaining troops out of the nation. The U.S. withdrawal prompted the swift removal
Taliban fighters have conquered the city of Mazar-e-Sharif, ransacking the palatial home of General Rashid Dostum, a U.S.-aligned warlord, as President Joe Biden “braces for a brutal loss,” in the words of Axios, a D.C. political news website.
Dostum helped lead the initial movement to overthrow the Taliban after the terror attacks of 9/11. He had also served as Vice President of the country for several years.
The UK Daily Mail showed images of Taliban fighters lounging in his luxurious chairs and enjoying his golden tea set, obtained via Twitter. The Daily Mail reported:
Dostum was a key US ally during the 20 year campaign
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The adult LGBTQ population in the United States reported living in households facing much higher levels of food insecurity when compared to non-LGBTQ adults, according to data recently released by the Census Bureau.
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Gov. J.B. Pritzker on Friday signed into a law a bill that bars hair discrimination in schools, saying it will help ensure that students statewide feel “comfortable and confident in their own skin.”But the mother whose son was an inspiration for the law — a 4-year-old Black child who was told his braids were a violation of school dress codes — said the moment “is bigger than just hair.”“Our hair is an extension of who we are as a race and is deeply connected with our cultural identity,” said Ida Nelson, who had a front row seat at the bill signing, holding son Gus “Jett” Hawkins in her lap.
What will it take for Joe Biden to admit he is disastrously wrong about Afghanistan? The US leader struck a defiant pose last week. Sounding like a slightly desperate Olympics coach, he told Afghans it was their country. If they want it, they have to fight for it. In American politics-speak, this is called tough love. Without the love.
Biden has more hands-on foreign policy experience than any president since George HW Bush. That doesn’t mean he knows what he’s doing. Opinion polls suggest his abrupt Afghan withdrawal has majority public support. That doesn’t mean Americans will remain indifferent as the carnage and misery mount.
GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell called on President Biden to launch 11th hour airstrikes against the Taliban in Afghanistan, as the group comes perilously close to seizing the nation’s capital of Kabul. “It is not too late to prevent the Taliban from overrunning Kabul,” The Kentucky senator said in a statement Friday, Fox News reported. “The Administration should move quickly to hammer Taliban advances with airstrikes, provide critical support to the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) defending the capital, and prevent the seemingly imminent fall of the city.”
The message came after McConnell had what he described as an “urgent conversation” with Adela Raz,
Joe Biden’s Department of Homeland Security just issued a terror threat advisory which is raising some eyebrows.
Listen, as Lester Holt and Pete Williams describe how the “terror threat advisory” isn’t based on any actual threats or plots, but just a lot of “anti-government rhetoric” that includes things like “opposition to COVID measures” like masks and vaccine measures. From Yahoo News:
“Extremists may seek to exploit the emergence of Covid-19 variants by viewing the potential re-establishment of public health restrictions across the United States as a rationale to conduct attacks,” the DHS advisory said, adding that “pandemic-related stressors… may contribute to more violence this year.”
So, if there aren’t any actual plots
A Teaneck woman who was attacked and suffered a broken bone in her leg in Staples last summer after asking a fellow customer to put on a mask has filed a lawsuit against the business. Margot Kagan, 55, says in court papers a lack of supervision and security left her “boxed in” and vulnerable to the woman who allegedly attacked her near the fax machines at the Hackensack store.(Snip)Video appears to show the suspect grabbing the frail woman and throwing her to the floor. “My knee broke while I was falling. I later learned it was my tibia,” Kagan said. Police arrested Terri Thomas, 25,
He sure is. One can give him a partial pass on COVID’s resurgence since the rise of the Delta variant was out of his hands. But the other three here are squarely on him. Even COVID is only a partial pass. Many millions of senior citizens are sitting around waiting to be infected as the immunity from shots they received six or seven months ago ebbs. What are Biden’s CDC and FDA doing about it? Jack at the moment, to all appearances.
I have no sense of how the catastrophic lightning fall of Afghanistan’s government will play with voters.
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As the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attack looms, the National September 11 Memorial & Museum is crying poverty for the second year in a row. This time, it says it can’t afford to mount special exhibitions planned to mark the two-decade milestone.
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In fact, this year, the museum is shamefully restricting the reading-of-the-names ceremony exclusively to the families of 9/11 victims. No hero firefighters, cops, first responders or emergency workers,
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