• Our military has been lying to us for 20 years on Afghanistan

    From a425couple@21:1/5 to All on Sun Sep 12 15:44:34 2021
    XPost: soc.history.war.misc, seattle.politics, or.politics

    Tucker Carlson is irritating here,
    but correct,, they lied about making progress
    in Afghanistan for the last 20 years.
    Brags about progress for 20 years, THEY HAD NOTHING!
    "Adults back in charge" - they are all lairs!

    from https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/tucker-carlson-our-military-has-been-lying-to-us-for-20-years

    Tucker Carlson: Our military has been lying to us for 20 years
    Fox News host claims military establishment projected illusion of
    progress, even when it was clear they were failing
    Tucker Carlson By Tucker Carlson | Fox News

    Tucker: Pentagon repeatedly said US was making 'progress' despite
    Afghanistan crisis

    Listen to this article
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    In July of 2017, every member of the joint chiefs of staff met with newly-elected President Donald Trump for the first time. It didn't go
    well. "You're all losers," the president told them, according to Foreign
    Policy magazine account. "You don't know how to win anymore."

    It was a harsh assessment, obviously though arguably true, the joint
    chiefs of staff are the nation's highest-ranking military officers.
    Their job is to follow the order of elected officials and protect the
    country, no matter how much their feelings may be hurt. But in this
    case, that's not what happened because the rules are different now.
    According to U.S. Army Major General Paul Eaten, the president's insults
    that day, and the similar comments he made in public, were a bitter
    humiliation for the nation's military leaders. They made it their
    mission to undermine civilian control of the Pentagon ever after. "I was
    really shocked by how many of my former colleagues voted for the former president and openly supported him," Eaten said. "But when [Trump]
    turned on the military, well, the military turned on him."

    TALIBAN CO-FOUNDER ‘BARADAR THE BUTCHER’ TO REPORTEDLY LEAD NEW AFGHAN GOVERNMENT

    Keep in mind, that is not how democracy is supposed to work—military
    leaders report to the people you elect. Again that’s not what happened. Stories began leaking about the president, President Trump, ignoring
    classified intelligence about Russian bounties in Afghanistan. Where do
    you think those stories came from? They came from the Pentagon—it was payback. Then the military refused to pull troops out of Syria and
    Afghanistan, even though they were ordered to do so by the elected
    president of the United States—again no civilian control of the
    military. When Joe Biden finally became president, on inauguration day,
    the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Mark Milley, was so excited
    he couldn’t control himself. "No one has a bigger smile today than I
    do," Milley told Michelle Obama—sucking up like a child. "You can’t see
    it under my mask, but I do." The media people who have supported Biden
    from the very beginning -- including a former C.I.A. Director, there are
    many of those on TV these days -- also celebrated. They told us the
    adults were back in charge, they said. The orange man is gone—everything
    is going to be better now:

    DANA BASH: Anybody who has any connection to reality about what is going
    on around them should have watched that and said, ‘The adults are back
    in the room" CORNELL BELCHER: It seems as though we have an adult in the
    White House who is simply doing the work FARED ZAKARIA: Really the theme
    I would say is that the adults are back JEMELE HILL: Still it is a
    relief to have adults in charge JOHN BRENNAN: Now we have adults in the
    White House DON LEMON: Okay, the adults are back in the room NICOLLE
    WALLACE: There is a sense, I think the world over, that the adults have returned JONATHAN CAPEHART: Now we have an adult in the White House and
    it’s glorious.

    Dan Hollaway shreds idea that the Taliban and al Qaeda are not linked Video

    Those clips are amazing to watch now because they consist of the most
    childish people in the country celebrating adulthood. But they look
    especially absurd in light of what we’ve just seen in Afghanistan. These days, Joe Biden's friends in the Pentagon and the "foreign affairs desk"
    at NBC News no longer think he’s an adult. He abandoned American
    citizens and got thirteen Americans killed, and suddenly they seem a
    little ashamed. Plus, he’s turned his back on the neocon project and
    that’s the greatest offense of all.

    But the bigger question is why our media and the military were talking
    like this in the first place. "The adults are back in charge?" What does
    that mean, exactly? If you follow what our generals have been telling us
    for the past twenty years about Afghanistan, you quickly realize exactly
    what it means. "Adults," means people are willing who pretend that
    everything is going fine when in fact it is not going fine.

    BLINKEN BLAMES TRUMP ADMIN SIV BACKLOG FOR FAILURE TO GET AFGHAN ALLIES
    OUT OF COUNTRY

    Consider that no matter how badly our mission in Afghanistan was deteriorating—we were never clear on what that mission was—but clearly,
    our strategy of pacifying the nation was falling apart. No matter how
    bad it got in Afghanistan, the Pentagon and its spokesmen repeatedly
    told us they were making incredible progress. And "progress" is the word
    they used again and again and again—almost as if they coordinated it. In 2005, the head of U.S. Central Command, General John Abizaid, told
    reporters quote, "over the three years that we’ve been operating there, [Afghanistan] has shown interesting progress." In 2007, the website
    "Task and Purpose" reported that another senior General, Dan McNeil, had
    a similar message. Quote: "I’d like to point out that there is
    significant progress in the forward move of the Afghan National Army."

    In 2008, the commander of the 101st Airborne -- another "adult" --
    concurred that progress was ongoing. Quote: "We’re making some steady progress." Then, in 2010, even as coalition casualties increased, the
    progress somehow continued unabated—it was progress no matter what. An
    Army Lieutenant General called David Rodriguez told reporters at a news conference in Kabul, quote, "We are steadily making deliberate progress."

    Erik Prince: 'Good leadership can turn a country around'Video

    That same year, Stanley McChrystal, then the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, also wanted us to know about all the progress that was
    being made. "I think we have made significant progress in setting the conditions in 2009 and beginning some progress, and that we’ll make real progress in 2010." Which we remind you was 11 years ago. Then Stanley McChrystal was fired for criticizing the Obama administration -- and in particular, the total incompetence of the current president Joe Biden -- General David Petraeus took over. And sure enough, Petreaus quickly
    declared that quote, "progress has been achieved in some critical areas,
    and we are poised to realize more." Progress.

    A year later, in 2011, Petraeus doubled down, telling lawmakers quote,
    "The past eight months have seen important but hard-fought progress."
    Speaking that summer to troops in Kandahar, the defense secretary,
    Robert Gates, echoed that theme:

    ROBERT GATES, June 2011: And what you’ve accomplished is extraordinary because over the course of the year you have essentially ejected the
    Taliban from their home territory. And if we can hold this territory
    and expand the bubble, then I think by the end of the year, we can turn
    the corner of this conflict.

    AFGHANISTAN VIRTUALLY MISSING FROM NEW YORK TIMES FRONT PAGE AMID
    BIDEN'S FOREIGN POLICY CRISIS

    placeholder
    Gates didn't actually use the word "progress"—he had more original
    language than that—but the message was the same. And just to make sure
    it was clear, senior military leaders kept using the word. A few years
    later, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, General Joseph
    Dunford, confirmed that the progress was indeed continuing. Quote: "At
    this point, we have made significant progress," Dunford said in 2013.
    Three years after that, in 2016, the new commander in Afghanistan, John
    W. Nicholson, was saying the same thing. "We are seeing some progress."
    As recently as last year, a spokesperson for Mark Milley said he was
    hard at work, making sure to "accelerate progress" in Afghanistan.

    So if you’re wondering why Americans are so confused that Kabul fell in
    an afternoon and the Taliban controlled the country we occupied for 20
    years, maybe it’s because they thought we were making progress.

    Greenwald: US government lied for two decades about AfghanistanVideo

    So considering that whole chronology -- consider the news Reuters broke
    this week about Joe Biden's recent conversation with the guy we
    installed as the "president" of Afghanistan, some college professor
    called Ashraf Ghani. Joe Biden told Ghani that, even as the Taliban was
    taking over the country this summer, the most important thing was
    keeping up the appearance of, you guessed it, progress. "I need not tell
    you the perception around the world and in parts of Afghanistan, I
    believe, is that things are not going well in terms of the fight against
    the Taliban," Biden said. "And there is a need, whether it is true or
    not, there is a need to project a different picture."

    Two things to stay about this. First, we know that this conversation
    took place because the Pentagon or State Department leaked it to
    Reuters. Why would they do that? Because whatever his faults, Biden did
    pull American troops from Afghanistan and they hate that. So leaked an audiotape of the president speaking to another head of state. That’s
    illegal. You can’t conduct statecraft if people are leaking the content
    of your conversations. Yet they are doing that to get back at him
    because he broke the rules. He stopped permanent war. He did it ineptly,
    but he did it.

    HANNITY RIPS BIDE ON AFGHANISTAN: AMERICANS BEING ‘HELD HOSTAGE … BEHIND ENEMY LINES’

    Lying to the rest of us about what is actually happening with our troops
    with our money in our name in a foreign country has been the philosophy
    of this nation's military establishment for the last twenty years, and
    it's also the philosophy of every high-ranking official in the Biden administration. Project the illusion of progress, even when it's clear
    we're failing. Tony Blinken, who runs the State Department ineptly, just announced the news that more than a hundred American citizens are
    trapped in Afghanistan—really kind of progress:

    ANTONY BLINKEN: Now, U.S. military flights have ended and our troops
    have departed Afghanistan. A new chapter of America’s engagement with Afghanistan has begun. It’s one in which we will lead with our
    diplomacy. The military mission is over. A new diplomatic mission has
    begun. // We believe there are still a small number of Americans, under
    200, and likely closer to 100, who remain in Afghanistan and want to
    leave. We’re trying to determine exactly how many.

    Victor Davis Hanson voices his concerns over U.S. military equipment
    left in AfghanistanVideo

    We had twenty years to figure it out but we have no idea how many
    Americans including schoolchildren remain in Afghanistan because we’re
    the adults in the room. And that is why we are going to "lead with our diplomacy." What does that look like exactly—how do you lead with
    diplomacy? Here's one example. Back in April of this year, Tony
    Blinken's State Department that announced that it was spending hundreds
    of millions of dollars on social programs in Afghanistan, to destroy the patriarchy—because that’s really our goal. Impose our modernist social values on prehistoric countries. We’re going to pay for programs that
    support "women’s empowerment." Where did that money go—to people like
    Dr. Bahar Jalali, who just posted this dirge for equity in Afghanistan
    on social media. "For 8.5 years, I taught at the American University of Afghanistan as a faculty member and academic administrator," she wrote.
    "I founded the first Gender Studies program in Afghanistan's history
    there. All our work, hopes, dreams, progress. Only to have it snatched
    away so needlessly."

    It takes a special kind of arrogance, we used to call it cultural
    imperialism, to imagine other cultures want to ape your family structure
    for example. Isn't it up to Afghans to decide what families they want?
    No. We tried to impose our customs on them and they hated it and maybe
    that’s one of the reasons the Taliban took over in a weekend.


    We hired people like Bahar Jalali and Ashraf Ghani to "lead with our diplomacy"—that’s what Afghanistan has looked like for the past twenty years. Meanwhile, while we've been leading with our diplomacy, we've
    given billions of dollars of American military equipment to the Taliban:

    BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Row upon row of sophisticated assault
    rifles, boxes of pistols, ammunition, vision equipment. Videos posted by
    the Taliban online in recent days boast of what they say are their
    seizures of the assault rifles in the Afghan city of Herat. And at
    Kunduz Airport, armored Humvees by the dozen, some Mine- Resistant
    Ambush Protected vehicles called MRAPs, costing half a million dollars
    apiece, even a small drone. These are the potentially lethal spoils the Taliban are believed to have captured in recent days from defeated
    Afghan forces. Weapons made in America, supplied by the U.S. to their
    fallen Afghan allies.

    So now, were arming the Taliban and marooning our own citizens in
    Afghanistan. Who could possibly have seen that coming?

    This article is adapted from Tucker Carlson's opening commentary on the September 3, 2021 edition of "Tucker Carlson Tonight."

    Tucker Carlson currently serves as the host of FOX News Channel’s (FNC) Tucker Carlson Tonight (weekdays 8PM/ET). He joined the network in 2009
    as a contributor.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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  • From Oleg Smirnov@21:1/5 to All on Fri Sep 17 12:38:24 2021
    XPost: soc.history.war.misc, seattle.politics, or.politics
    XPost: sci.military.naval

    a425couple, <news:kpv%I.75463$jl2.61955@fx34.iad>

    Tucker Carlson is irritating here,
    but correct,, they lied about making progress
    in Afghanistan for the last 20 years.
    Brags about progress for 20 years, THEY HAD NOTHING!
    "Adults back in charge" - they are all lairs!

    from https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/tucker-carlson-our-military-has-been-lying-to-us-for-20-years

    Tucker Carlson: Our military has been lying to us for 20 years

    That's not the only topic they've been lying to you for many years.
    Get ready to get more bitter truths and bad news in the future.
    Things aren't good, and it'll be getting only worse.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Stephen Harding@21:1/5 to Oleg Smirnov on Fri Sep 17 09:52:41 2021
    XPost: soc.history.war.misc, seattle.politics, or.politics
    XPost: sci.military.naval

    No bitter truths and bad news from the Soviet ^H^H^H^H^H^H Russian Press.


    SMH


    On 9/17/21 5:38 AM, Oleg Smirnov wrote:
    a425couple, <news:kpv%I.75463$jl2.61955@fx34.iad>

    Tucker Carlson is irritating here,
    but correct,, they lied about making progress
    in Afghanistan for the last 20 years.
    Brags about progress for 20 years, THEY HAD NOTHING!
    "Adults back in charge" - they are all lairs!

    from
    https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/tucker-carlson-our-military-has-been-lying-to-us-for-20-years


    Tucker Carlson: Our military has been lying to us for 20 years

    That's not the only topic they've been lying to you for many years.
    Get ready to get more bitter truths and bad news in the future.
    Things aren't good, and it'll be getting only worse.


    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From George Black@21:1/5 to Stephen Harding on Sat Sep 18 07:47:21 2021
    XPost: soc.history.war.misc, seattle.politics, or.politics
    XPost: sci.military.naval

    On 18/09/21 1:52 am, Stephen Harding wrote:
    No bitter truths and bad news from the Soviet ^H^H^H^H^H^H Russian Press.


    SMH
    Russians depend upon the purported troubles of others to hide their own

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Byker@21:1/5 to Oleg Smirnov on Mon Sep 20 14:41:05 2021
    XPost: soc.history.war.misc, seattle.politics, or.politics
    XPost: sci.military.naval

    "Oleg Smirnov" wrote in message news:si1nqn$7iv$1@os.motzarella.org...


    Who, ours, yours, or both?

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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