Tag: afghanistan

The ‘War On Terror’ Scam Continues

ISIS has reportedly claimed credit for an explosion near Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport. As of this writing there are around 90 dead including 13 US military personnel, though to read western mainstream media reports you’d think only US troops died and not scores of Afghans as well.

This was the deadliest attack in a decade on US troops in Afghanistan, which is odd to think about considering how many people the US military has killed during that time; just between January and July of this year the war killed 1,659 civilians. The way the US war machine has shifted to relying more on highly profitable missiles and bombs and unmanned aircraft to avoid the bad PR of flag-draped bodies flying home on jets is making the murder of foreigners a safer profession than working at a convenience store.

Because US military casualties of this size have become more rare despite their being spread throughout the world in nations whose people don’t want them there, news of those 13 deaths is being met with shock and astonishment instead of being regarded as a very normal part of foreign military occupations. People are acting like these were mall cops in Ohio and not military forces overseeing the tail end of a 20-year war overseas, and pundits and politicians are demanding more bombs and more military interventionism in response to people on the other side of the world attacking them in their own country.

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Biden: ‘They Gave Me A List … I Was Instructed To Call On’ Certain Reporters Before Fielding Questions

President Joe Biden said out loud that NBC’s Kelly O’Donnell was the first reporter he was “instructed to call on” to ask him a question during a Thursday press briefing following a terrorist attack outside the Kabul airport.

“Ladies and gentlemen, they gave me a list here. The first person I was instructed to call on was Kelly O’Donnell of NBC,” Biden said, kicking off the Q&A part of the briefing.

Immediately after Biden’s announcement, O’Donnell got the mic and asked the president about his plans regarding a potential deployment of additional forces to Afghanistan in response to the ISIS-K attack.

“I’ve instructed the military. Whatever they need, if they need additional force, I will grant it,” Biden replied, adding that the military officials had expressed their intent to get as many people as possible out of the country, as per the initial plan.

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Obama Defense Secretary ALREADY Calling For Fresh Military Occupation Of Afghanistan

The chaos in Afghanistan created by the appalling organisation of withdrawing from the country by the Biden administration has already prompted globalists to begin fresh calls for a new US military occupation of the country, with Obama’s former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta declaring that US forces will have to return.

In an interview on CNN, Panetta, also a former CIA head, proclaimed “The bottom line is, our work is not done. We’re going to have to go after ISIS.

Following the suicide bombings Thursday that killed over 100 people, 13 of them US marines, Panetta said “We’re going to have to go back in to get ISIS. We’re probably going to have to go back in when Al Qaeda resurrects itself, as they will, with this Taliban. They’ve gave safe haven to Al Qaeda before, they’ll probably do it again.”

“We can’t leave the War on Terrorism, which still is a threat to our security,” Panetta added.

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Ocasio-Cortez: U.S. Must Accept 200,000 Afghan Refugees to Make Amends for Immoral War

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) said Thursday on MSNBC’s “The ReidOut” that the United States should accept at least 200,000 Afghanistan refugees to make amends for our role in the 20-year war.

Anchor Joy Reid said, “Terrorism happened here on January 6th. We are seeing in Afghanistan right now a terrorist attack today that killed 13 of our troops, Marines and  a member of the Navy. But we’re also trying to get as many people out as possible. Talk about raising the cap, how can it be done, why should be done?”

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U.S. officials provided Taliban with names of Americans, Afghan allies to evacuate

U.S. officials in Kabul gave the Taliban a list of names of American citizens, green card holders and Afghan allies to grant entry into the militant-controlled outer perimeter of the city’s airport, a choice that’s prompted outrage behind the scenes from lawmakers and military officials.

The move, detailed to POLITICO by three U.S. and congressional officials, was designed to expedite the evacuation of tens of thousands of people from Afghanistan as chaos erupted in Afghanistan’s capital city last week after the Taliban seized control of the country. It also came as the Biden administration has been relying on the Taliban for security outside the airport.

Since the fall of Kabul in mid-August, nearly 100,000 people have been evacuated, most of whom had to pass through the Taliban’s many checkpoints. But the decision to provide specific names to the Taliban, which has a history of brutally murdering Afghans who collaborated with the U.S. and other coalition forces during the conflict, has angered lawmakers and military officials.

“Basically, they just put all those Afghans on a kill list,” said one defense official, who like others spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive topic. “It’s just appalling and shocking and makes you feel unclean.”

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Pentagon posts dog pics on Instagram while bombs explode at Kabul airport and Afghanistan disaster continues

At least two bomb blasts and gunfire erupted around the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul on Thursday, resulting in “a number of” U.S. troop deaths and injuries. Amid that chaos, the Pentagon’s Instagram account carried on posting pictures of dogs in celebration of National Dog Day.

The Department of Defense Instagram account posted seven different photos of dogs on Thursday morning, around the same time Pentagon spokesman John Kirby was publicly confirming the first explosion outside the Kabul Airport.

Up to 13 people were reportedly killed in the bomb blasts outside the Kabul airport, while others were reported injured. Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby confirmed that “a number of U.S. service members” were both killed and injured in the attack.

CNN contributor Frida Ghitis tweeted that four or more U.S. service members had been wounded or killed in the attack, according to a State Department official. Other media outlets said four U.S. Marines were killed.

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“War Is a Racket”: The US War in Afghanistan Validates General Smedley Butler

“I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.” – Major General Smedley Darlington Butler (1881-1940) in his book “War is a Racket” (1935).

The ending of the 20-year-war in Afghanistan, the longest ever engagement in a single conflict by the United States armed forces, has been variously described as a “catastrophe”, a “disaster” and a “debacle”. Yet this national failure from which parallels have been drawn with the Vietnam War has not had the same ring of misfortune for some.

Indeed, long before the recent scenes of calamity and collapse in Kabul brought home with resounding finality the futility of a supposed nation-building exercise, the profit-motive for the initial US invasion and the preservation of an enduring occupation was an open secret to anyone who bothered to embark on the slightest inquiry.

The gravy train of American defence spending was in full effect, facilitated by the tentacles of what US President Dwight D. Eisenhower prophesied would become the Military Industrial Complex. For the last two decades have witnessed what has been described as a “wealth transfer from US taxpayers to military contractors”.  But the war, apart from confirming Afghanistan’s reputation as the “Graveyard of Empires”, also validates the phrase coined by US Major General Smedley Butler that war is a racket.

The blame game currently being played out in the United States media by the political class risks obscuring one fundamental issue: the centrality of money and the profit motive in the waging of America’s two-decade-long war in Afghanistan.

The invasion of that country had been planned well in advance of the attacks of September 11th, 2001, the event which provided the impetus for mounting a military response including the country’s occupation. The United States has long coveted gaining access to the mineral and oil rich Caspian region and Central Asia, and the coming to power of the fundamentalist Islamic Taliban movement was not seen at the time by US policy makers as an impenetrable obstacle.

As the French writers Jean-Charles Briscard and Guillaume Dasquie wrote in their book Forbidden Truth: U.S.-Taliban Secret Oil Diplomacy and the Failed Hunt for Bin Laden, which was published in 2002, the American government had been prepared to accept Taliban rule on condition that they agreed to the construction of an oil pipeline across Central Asia.

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Former CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden Says It’s a “Good Idea” to Drop Off Unvaccinated Trump Supporters in Taliban-Controlled Afghanistan

Former CIA Director General Michael Hayden on Sunday said it’s a “good idea” to send unvaccinated Trump supporters to Talban-controlled Afghanistan.

“Can we send the MAGA wearing unvaxxed to Afghanistan, no use sending that plane back empty?” a twitter user tweeted to Hayden.

“Good idea” Hayden replied.

Michael Hayden routinely lashed out at Trump over the last few years because Trump worked on reversing the precedents Hayden created as CIA Director.

Trump wanted to bring back accountability for abuses of power among CIA leadership.

Hayden was an Air Force General and yet for the first time in US military history a senior US Air Force colonel was investigated, indicted and convicted by Italy for a crime of kidnapping that had been authorized at the senior most levels of the CIA and the NSC. The US refused to assert a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), a standard procedure when any military officer is in trouble for even drunken behavior.

According to former CIA agent Sabrina De Sousa, also under General Hayden, another precedent that has direct impact on emboldening the CIA into using senior foreign intelligence surrogates in covert operations – then imposing state secrets to protect them – while sacrificing the rank and file.

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