Tag: afghanistan

Report: Trump Team Putting Together List of Military Officers Involved in Afghanistan Withdrawal

President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team is putting together a list of United States military officers who were involved in the Biden Administration’s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, according to a recent report.

Two people familiar with the plan told NBC News that Trump’s transition team is reportedly in talks about whether to establish “a commission to investigate” the Biden administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, which left 13 American service members dead.

The commission would reportedly also gather “information about who was directly involved in the decision-making for the military,” and how the plan “was carried out,” among other things.

“They’re taking it very seriously,” one person with the plan explained to the outlet.

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DHS Sec. Mayorkas Bristles at Reporters Asking How CIA-Linked Afghan ISIS Terror Suspect Was Allowed Into U.S.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas lashed out at reporters for asking him how his agency allowed an Afghan terror suspect into the U.S. without proper vetting.

Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi, a former CIA security contractor, was arrested by the FBI in Oklahoma City Monday for plotting a terrorist attack against large crowds on Election Day.

According to the DOJ’s charging documents, Tawhedi was brought into the U.S. on a Special Immigrant Visa, which are given to Afghans who worked with the U.S. in Afghanistan after they pass DHS screening.

But State Department sources familiar with Tawhedi’s arrest contend that the DOJ’s charging document is incorrect, and that Tawhedi entered the U.S. on humanitarian parole. 

During a White House press briefing a reporter asked Mayorkas, who appeared remotely from North Carolina, to clarify the discrepancy between his agency and the DOJ.

“How was this man brought into the U.S.? What screening did he undergo? What did he apply for to get here?” the reporter asked.

A visibly irritated Mayorkas snapped at the reporter and tried to pivot to FEMA’s response to the Hurricane Helene aftermath.

“I’m here in North Carolina, we’re communicating with the individuals who are still conducting search and rescue operations,” Mayorkas responded. “Over 200 people lost their lives in Hurricane Helene. We have reports that at least 10 individuals have lost their lives as a result of Hurricane Milton. I’d be very pleased to answer your question in a different setting, but we’re here to talk about emergencies and the support that we can deliver to people in desperate need. Thank you.”

But the reporter pressed him again to clarify conflicting answers between the DHS and DOJ’s reason for bringing suspected terrorist Tawhedi into the U.S.

“I understand that Mr. Secretary, but we’re getting conflicting answers from your agency and the State Department about a man who arrested for an Election Day terror plot. How do you not have those answers prepared?” the reporter asked.

Mayorkas snapped, “Jackie, that’s not what I said. What I said is I’d be pleased to discuss, uh, this issue at a different time, but I am here to speak about disasters that have impacted people’s lives in real time, and that is the subject that I’m addressing today.”

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REVEALED: Afghan Terrorist Arrested For Plotting Election Day Attack Was CIA Security Guard

As previously reported, the FBI arrested an Afghan national who was plotting an ISIS-inspired Election Day terrorist attack.

Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi was arrested in Oklahoma City on Monday after federal law enforcement sent a confidential human source (CHS) to secretly communicate with him and his co-conspirators.

According to federal prosecutors, Tawhedi said he purchased two kalashnikov rifles and ordered 500 bullets.

“What do you think, brother? Is it enough or should we increase it,” the Telegram message said, according to CBS News.

“In subsequent messages, Tawhedi said his father-in-law’s house had sold for $185,000, and they would receive the funds by Oct. 15. He also asked for help in resettling his family, which included his mother in law, wife, their young daughter, and five of his wife’s siblings, in Afghanistan. Tawhedi purchased one-way plane tickets for the family to travel to Kabul on Oct. 17,” CBS News reported.

“After that we will begin our duty, God willing, with the help of God, we will get ready for the election day,” Tawhedi wrote.

Tawhedi was ferried into the US by the Biden-Harris Regime after their botched Afghanistan withdrawal in 2021 on a Special Immigrant Visa.

Now this…

Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi worked as a security guard for the CIA in Afghanistan.

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DOJ Arrests Afghan Refugee and ISIS Supporter for Conspiring to Conduct Election Day Attack – Arrived with Tens of Thousands of Unvetted Afghans During Joe Biden’s Botched Withdrawal from Afghanistan

The Merrick Garland Department of Justice arrested Afghan refugee Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi from Oklahoma City for conspiring to conduct an Election Day attack in November.

As reported earlier, Tawhedi planned the attack on behalf of ISIS.

According to the DOJ:

Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi, 27, conspired and attempted to provide material support to ISIS and obtained firearms and ammunition to conduct a violent attack on U.S. soil in the name of ISIS.

As part of the plot, the defendant allegedly took steps to liquidate his family’s assets, resettle members of his family overseas, acquire AK-47 assault rifles and ammunition, and commit a terrorist attack in the United States.

“As charged, the Justice Department foiled the defendant’s plot to acquire semi-automatic weapons and commit a violent attack in the name of ISIS on U.S. soil on Election Day,” said Attorney General Merrick B. Garland.

“We will continue to combat the ongoing threat that ISIS and its supporters pose to America’s national security, and we will identify, investigate, and prosecute the individuals who seek to terrorize the American people.

The FBI set him up.

While liquidating their family’s assets prior to the attack, Tawhedi and his co-conspirator, who is a juvenile, advertised the sale of the family’s personal property on Facebook.

At the FBI’s direction, a confidential human source responded to inquire if a computer was still for sale. The FBI source noted that he needed the computer for a new gun business he was starting, which ultimately led Tawhedi and the juvenile to meet with the source and other FBI assets at a rural location to test firearms. Tawhedi expressed interest in purchasing two AK-47 assault rifles, magazines, and ammunition from the source.

According to the criminal complaint, on Oct. 7, Tawhedi and the juvenile met with the FBI assets at a rural location in the Western District of Oklahoma and purchased, received, and took possession of two AK-47 assault rifles, ten magazines, and 500 rounds of ammunition.

Upon receipt of the rifles and ammunition, Tawhedi and the juvenile were arrested.

Tawhedi entered the US on September 9, 2021, as one of Joe Biden’s unvetted refugees from Afghanistan.

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US Provoked the 1979 Russian Invasion of Afghanistan: Parallel to the Ukraine War?

The December 1979 invasion of Afghanistan was a watershed event, one that definitively ended “détente” between the global superpowers, the United States and the USSR, and inaugurated a new and more intense phase of tension. The invasion was a clearcut violation of international law and was widely condemned. At the time, it appeared that the Soviet invasion was completely unprovoked, either by the Afghans themselves or by the United States.

In the nearly half century that that has elapsed since the invasion, a large amount of new information has emerged that casts doubt on the benign image of the US government, as a bystander in the Afghan calamity, and suggests that US officials deliberately provoked the invasion; and then, after the invasion occurred, some US officials actively welcomed its occurrence.

A reexamination of the 1979 Afghan case seems especially relevant today, given the obvious parallels to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. Indeed, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared that the US response to the invasion of Afghanistan offers a model of what US officials should seek to achieve in Ukraine. The similarities between the two historical cases are indeed striking: Above all, the 1979 Afghan invasion was widely viewed at the time as being an unprovoked act of aggression, very much the way that the Ukraine invasion is being viewed now. We will see that such claims are contradicted by the historical record. It was US provocation that triggered both conflicts.

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was widely presented as a major threat to Western security, but this was largely a propaganda invention. If one surveys the record of declassified documents from 1945 all the way to the late 1970s, one finds little US interest in Afghanistan, which was regarded as a strategic backwater, due to its exceptionally rugged geography and lack of access to the sea. The overarching US perspective was succinctly stated by a 1973 article in the Wall Street Journal, which was entitled: “Do the Russians Covet Afghanistan? If So, it is Hard to Figure Why.” The article went on to characterize Afghanistan as “a vast expanse of desert waste.” From the US National Security Council, a 1974 document stated: “Afghanistan is of no major importance to us.”

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SHAMEFUL: Biden Admin’s John Kirby Said to Ignore Afghanistan Veterans Because They Don’t Vote Democrat

John Kirby of the Biden administration has just been caught saying something truly shameful about American veterans.

He did not realize that he had hit ‘reply all’ on an email inquiry sent to his office by FOX News seeking comment on veterans and the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Kirby’s response stated that there was ‘no use in responding’ because these veterans are not Harris voters.

FOX News reported:

Kirby: ‘No use in responding’ to a ‘handful of vets’ on Biden’s botched Afghan withdrawal

On the anniversary of 9/11, White House National Security Council communications adviser John Kirby dismissed the concerns of military veterans critical of the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, writing in response to a Fox News Digital press inquiry that there’s “no use” weighing in on the veterans’ views.

“Obviously no use in responding. A ‘handful’ of vets indeed and all of one stripe,” Kirby said in a “reply all” email chain Wednesday afternoon that appeared to be intended for White House staffers, but which also included Fox News Digital.

Fox News Digital had reached out to the White House earlier Wednesday afternoon regarding critical comments from four veterans, including Rep. Cory Mills, R-Fla., who blasted Kirby for his Monday press conference that they said provided “cover” for the Biden administration’s 2021 withdrawal…

Kirby’s message was sent in error, with him following up with a Fox News Digital reporter, “Clearly, I didn’t realize you were on the chain.” Kirby sent the email while traveling with President Biden on the anniversary of 9/11.

People are really angry about this and rightfully so.

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Harris Blames Trump for Botched Afghanistan Withdrawal in Blistering Statement

In a new twist to the 2024 presidential race, vice president Kamala Harris’s campaign has blamed President Donald Trump for the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. 

The one that took place seven months after Trump left office. 

Breitbart News reported that the withdrawal, which resulted in the rapid takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban, remains a point of contention for both parties.

The outlet further noted that on Friday, the Harris-Walz campaign issued a statement claiming, “Trump left the Biden-Harris Administration with zero plans for an orderly withdrawal — only a dangerous, costly mess.” 

The statement comes in response to Trump’s recent public appearances honoring the 13 U.S. service members killed during the chaotic evacuation at Kabul International Airport.

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Biden was hellbent on leaving Afghanistan — ignoring military advice, NATO objections and Afghan pleas: House report

President Biden was so hellbent on getting out of Afghanistan that he rebuked any advice to the contrary, ignored the pleas of the Afghan government and disregarded objections from US allies.

That was the one of the main takeaways from the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s more than two-year investigation into America’s chaotic, deadly Afghanistan withdrawal, according to a blistering report released Sunday.

“During his decades-long tenure as a Delaware US senator, eight years as vice president of the United States and nearly four years as president, Mr. Biden has demonstrated distrust of America’s military experts and advisors and has prioritized politics and his personal legacy over America’s national security interests,” the roughly 350-page report asserted.

His administration consistently lied to and misled the American public to try to convince it to support his consequences-be-damned view that the US should swiftly end its 20-year war in Afghanistan, the review said.

Former President Donald Trump’s administration had previously created and entered into the Doha Agreement with the Afghan government and the Taliban to end the US war in Afghanistan.

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The Real Tragedy of Afghanistan 

Any story of the August 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan must begin in the earliest days of the Obama administration, when the young president, possessed with an overwhelming mandate to end the endless wars begun by his predecessor, was rolled by members of his own cabinet—most notably Secretary of State Hillary Clinton—and his top military and intelligence advisers, who together prevented the president from doing what he was sent to Washington to do: End the disastrous wars begun under George W. Bush.

Almost alone among Obama’s advisers counseling withdrawal were his vice president, Joe Biden, and Biden’s longtime adviser Tom Donilon, then serving as Obama’s national security adviser. 

Twelve years later, President Biden must have felt some measure of satisfaction that it was he who was able to do that which his two predecessors, Obama and Trump, could or would not, when he ordered the final withdrawal of American troops from that Central Asian wasteland. 

And yet, as with anything involving Biden and his national security team of Keystone Cops, all did not go as planned. 

The decision to withdraw from Afghanistan was and remains a deeply divisive one. While Biden for once showed some measure of political courage in ordering the withdrawal, the execution went badly awry. Tragically, on Aug. 26, 2021, thirteen American soldiers and 170 Afghan civilians were killed in a terrorist attack by the Islamic State–Khorasan Province at the Abbey Gate of Hamid Karzai International Airport.

The reaction to the botched withdrawal from America’s own militants was swift. Clutching his pearls on CBS’s Face the Nation, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham exclaimed, 

We set the conditions for another 9/11. I’ve never been more worried about an attack on our homeland than I am right now. And we did not end this war. President Biden said that he wanted to take Afghanistan off the plate for future presidents. He’s done the exact opposite. For the next 20 years, American presidents will be dealing with this catastrophe in Afghanistan. This war has not ended. We’ve entered into a new deadly chapter. Terrorists are now in charge of Afghanistan.

Needless to say, none of this came about. In point of fact, it was the Taliban, once in power, that ended up taking out the perpetrator of the Abbey Gate attack. And, as an actual military expert, the decorated combat veteran and The American Conservative contributing editor Douglas Macgregor, told TAC this week, 

The sudden, rapid withdrawal from Afghanistan removed the failed American ‘whole of government’ fiasco in Southwest Asia from the national spotlight, but at great cost, revealing the acute lack of professional military competence in the senior ranks of the U.S. Armed Forces.

Criticism of Biden’s decision to withdraw has become a staple of Trump’s stump speeches. Missing from the criticism is the fact that the ceasefire agreement signed under Trump between the U.S. and the Taliban in February 2020 provided the US with a four-month window to withdraw—this would have been true regardless of who was president. Trump often claims that, unlike Biden, he would have kept Bagram airfield. Speaking at a rally in late July, Trump claimed, 

I was getting out. After 21 years you get the hell out, but I would have kept Bagram. It’s one hour away from where China makes its nuclear weapons. We gave it to them so stupidly.

Translation: If I were president, we’d still be there. 

His criticism reeks of opportunism. But still more, what it misses is that the entire enterprise was a tragedy—from start to finish—because it was unnecessary. The Taliban did not attack America; Al Qaeda did. Besides al Qaeda, the main movers behind 9/11 were Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Recall that Ahmad Uhmar Sheikh, at the direction of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence director general, General Mahmoud Ahmed, wired $100,000 to 9/11 hijacker Mohomed Atta. Bin Laden was hiding out in Abbottabad, Pakistan, with the connivance of ISI. 

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Biden Pentagon spokesman insisted Afghan withdrawal wasn’t chaotic but his emails say otherwise

The Pentagon’s chief spokesman has long insisted there was no “chaos” during the bungled U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, but his own email correspondence shows senior officials were acutely aware that conditions in the country were chaotic and spiraling into deadly violence, according to newly obtained government documents.

These memos and emails chronicle political efforts by the Biden/Harris administration to soft-pedal the truth to the American people about its first major foreign crisis. The documents were obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request from the nonprofit watchdog Functional Government Initiative.

The memos show, for instance, that while then-DOD Undersecretary of Communications John Kirby tried to jaw-bone reporters to portray the Afghan withdrawal as orderly like President Joe Biden had promised, he was receiving briefings from diplomats and military officials in theater who were frantic to stabilize a crisis, particularly at the Kabul airport were evacuations of Americans were taking place.

One State Department situation report emailed to Kirby on Aug. 16, 2021 — 10 days before a suicide bomber killed 13 U.S. Marines — referred to “breaches” and “flightline insecurity” at the airport that resulted in the exchange of gunfire that killed five Afghans and may have wounded an American soldier. “The crowd was out of control, the firing was only done to defuse the chaos,” the email reported, citing an official U.S. statement released inside the country.

“Hundreds have flooded the flight line and in at least one case, have forced themselves onto at least one US mil (and other civilian) aircraft. Crowds continue to run alongside planes, including mil aircraft,” the report added. Several Afghans clinging to U.S. aircraft fell to their deaths.

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