Biden's address
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@george-k said in Biden's address:
More lies:
How would we possibly know if this true or not? I’m not saying it’s false but I have to believe Wikipedia is a ton more credible than relying on tweets.
Reading through his other tweets you get a sense of the person, skip over the vaccine skeptic parts, it makes getting through all his tweets difficult.
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@loki said in Biden's address:
How would we possibly know if this true or not?
Well, a month ago they ran out of smart bombs.
Afghan Air Force pilots have run out of laser-guided weaponry due to the sudden loss of support from the United States and NATO after President Joe Biden decided to exit Afghanistan, according to a senior Afghan lawmaker.
“They're completely out of stock for the laser munitions,” Afghan member of parliament Haji Ajmal Rahmani told the State Department Correspondents' Association in a virtual briefing from Kabul. “It's not low — it's actually out of stock.”
The logistical difficulty arose as Taliban forces surged across the country in the wake of departing NATO forces, an offensive Afghanistan’s modest air force has tried to blunt as the number of U.S. strikes has dwindled. Rahmani and his colleagues are appealing Congress for additional support, warning Biden’s “hasty withdrawal” emboldened the Taliban and undermined the embattled Afghan military’s ability to repel the militants.
“It was a hasty withdrawal,” Rahmani said, explaining Afghan forces were left with the munitions at a time when NATO forces were expected to continue carrying out most of the airstrikes in the country. "When they have made a request [for more munitions], the feedback was, it will take some more time because they have to make the orders and it will take time to produce and ship to Afghanistan, and they are talking up around one year, more or less, till it will reach Afghanistan.”
The tweet is from the daily beast:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/taliban-at-gates-of-kabul-as-afghanistan-collapses-without-us-support
Behind a paywall:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/19/world/asia/Afghanistan-withdrawal-contractors.html
Also a paywall:
https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/08/16/afghanistan-military-collapse-private-contractors/
Military analysts trying to understand the stunning collapse of the Afghan military are increasingly pointing to the departure of U.S. government contractors starting a month ago as one of the key turning points.
The Afghans had relied on contractors for everything from training and gear maintenance to preparing them for intelligence gathering and close air support in their battles against Taliban fighters.
Thousands of those contractors—often military veterans who work for private security firms—left Afghanistan weeks ago and deployed elsewhere in the region or in the Persian Gulf.
“[I]t was their departure that led to the erosion of the capability of the Afghan Air Force elements, which were critical,” a former senior U.S. commander with extensive experience in Afghanistan told Foreign Policy on condition of anonymity. “But how could they have been left behind when our forces that provided ultimate security for them were withdrawn?”
The contractors continued to advise Afghan troops by video, but former officials said it was no substitute for operating alongside them.
“We built the Afghan army in our image to be an army that operates with air support and intelligence [and] whose backbone is contractors,” David Sedney, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense for Afghanistan, told Foreign Policy in a recent interview.
Experts told Foreign Policy that Afghan troops could still do the basics of ground combat without American contractors, and they’d even added some level of skill in repairing military vehicles.
But it was the U.S.-supplied air power that gave Afghan troops their advantage over Taliban fighters, and without on-the-ground maintenance contractors, the military quickly collapsed.
“Contractors were essential for keeping most of the air platforms flying,” said Sean Carberry, who served in the U.S. Department of Defense’s inspector general office until earlier this year.
“The [Afghan army] could still conduct operations without contractors—they could fight, maneuver, shoot, all the basics. But, without the safety net of ISR [intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance] and air support, many Afghan soldiers didn’t want to go head to head with the Taliban.” -
What is the difference between the Taliban overrunning Kabul vs 2 months from now?
For the record I agree that the speed of the fall is a stunning intelligence failure and people should lose their job over it.
As far as why so fast there is no way a complete analysis doesn’t have a large section on what happened the last couple of years.
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What is the difference between the Taliban overrunning Kabul vs 2 months from now?
For the record I agree that the speed of the fall is a stunning intelligence failure and people should lose their job over it.
As far as why so fast there is no way a complete analysis doesn’t have a large section on what happened the last couple of years.
@loki said in Biden's address:
What is the difference between the Taliban overrunning Kabul vs 2 months from now?
They could have got US allies and all the people who they'd promised visas to out in an orderly manner?
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What is the difference between the Taliban overrunning Kabul vs 2 months from now?
For the record I agree that the speed of the fall is a stunning intelligence failure and people should lose their job over it.
As far as why so fast there is no way a complete analysis doesn’t have a large section on what happened the last couple of years.
@loki said in Biden's address:
What is the difference between the Taliban overrunning Kabul vs 2 months from now?
For the record I agree that the speed of the fall is a stunning intelligence failure and people should lose their job over it.
As far as why so fast there is no way a complete analysis doesn’t have a large section on what happened the last couple of years.
I think you're bending over backwards trying to be fair.
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He's completely fucked this up. There's no denying it. Even Jim and Margery on NPR say it's a big old mess, and I normally have to switch them off as they're too liberal even for me.
Sorry to be so negative. I'm usually much more upbeat.
