The_Face_of_Boo
Veteran
Joined: 16 Jun 2010
Age: 44
Gender: Non-binary
Posts: 33,664
Location: Beirut, Lebanon.
16 Aug 2021, 9:42 am
16 Aug 2021, 10:34 am
16 Aug 2021, 10:39 am
16 Aug 2021, 10:47 am
16 Aug 2021, 10:49 am
16 Aug 2021, 10:59 am
16 Aug 2021, 11:12 am
Nades wrote:
Pepe wrote:
Nades wrote:
All the men leaving and abandoning their women and kids again I see.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9897201/Terror-Kabul-airport-Troops-fire-shots-air-desperate-Afghans-climb-airbridges.html
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9897201/Terror-Kabul-airport-Troops-fire-shots-air-desperate-Afghans-climb-airbridges.html
That is a very long article, and I stopped reading half ways down.
But what I did read gave no validity to your assertion.
Perhaps you can cut&paste?
The Oracle of Truth.
The pictures in the article. The female to male ratio has always been about 50/50 since the dawn of humanity. Clearly the pictures are not a 50/50 ratio.
This was the afghan culture, even with the Amerians.
I imagine single women as interpreters would have been unseemly.
"Job for the boys", I'd say.
16 Aug 2021, 11:16 am
16 Aug 2021, 11:18 am
16 Aug 2021, 11:21 am
16 Aug 2021, 11:27 am
Fnord wrote:
The_Walrus wrote:
Blood on Biden’s hands.
[color=black]How so? It is not as if American forces were all withdrawn at once and without warning.The (former) Afghan government had ample warning of the eventual withdrawal and its troops had the best equipment and the best training.
So why did the Afghani men not put up a fight? Were they expecting their hired mercenaries (e.g., the American forces) to do their fighting for them forever? Or did they secretly want a return to expulsion of foreigners and the re-enslavement of their women?
That part of the world generally doesn't like the democratisation of their culture.
Same problem in Iraq.
It worked in Germany and Japan, however.
"Different strokes for different folks."
16 Aug 2021, 11:29 am
Pepe wrote:
Brictoria wrote:
Quote:
As panicked Afghans watched Taliban fighters roll into the capital city of Kabul Sunday, sealing the collapse of the U.S.-backed government there, many Americans were left wondering how top Biden officials could have been so wrong in their recent proclamations that Kabul would not easily fall.
Just days ago, a U.S. military analysis reported by ABC News predicted that Kabul could fall within 90 days -- not by the weekend.
"This is a crisis of untold proportions," Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) told NBC News Sunday as Taliban militants swept into Kabul. "This is an intelligence failure. We underestimated the Taliban and overestimated the resolve of the Afghan Army."
But numerous U.S. officials tell ABC News that the opposite was true, insisting that key intelligence assessments had consistently informed policymakers that the Taliban could overwhelm the country and take the capital within weeks -- essentially repeating the 1975 fall of Saigon, when helicopters hastily evacuated diplomats from the U.S. embassy's rooftop as the North Vietnamese Army stormed into the South Vietnam capital.
The Taliban, which has long called itself the "Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan," announced they had entered Kabul soon after Afghan President Ashraf Ghani fled the country on Sunday afternoon, setting off a rush to the city's airport and a stepped-up evacuation of the U.S. embassy by a fleet of military helicopters guarded by AH-64 Apache attack helicopters orbiting the once-impenetrable Green Zone. President Joe Biden rushed to move in thousands of U.S. troops to evacuate American officials still in the capital.
"[U.S.] leaders were told by the military it would take no time at all for the Taliban to take everything," an anonymous U.S. intelligence official told ABC News. "No one listened."
Just days ago, a U.S. military analysis reported by ABC News predicted that Kabul could fall within 90 days -- not by the weekend.
"This is a crisis of untold proportions," Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) told NBC News Sunday as Taliban militants swept into Kabul. "This is an intelligence failure. We underestimated the Taliban and overestimated the resolve of the Afghan Army."
But numerous U.S. officials tell ABC News that the opposite was true, insisting that key intelligence assessments had consistently informed policymakers that the Taliban could overwhelm the country and take the capital within weeks -- essentially repeating the 1975 fall of Saigon, when helicopters hastily evacuated diplomats from the U.S. embassy's rooftop as the North Vietnamese Army stormed into the South Vietnam capital.
The Taliban, which has long called itself the "Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan," announced they had entered Kabul soon after Afghan President Ashraf Ghani fled the country on Sunday afternoon, setting off a rush to the city's airport and a stepped-up evacuation of the U.S. embassy by a fleet of military helicopters guarded by AH-64 Apache attack helicopters orbiting the once-impenetrable Green Zone. President Joe Biden rushed to move in thousands of U.S. troops to evacuate American officials still in the capital.
"[U.S.] leaders were told by the military it would take no time at all for the Taliban to take everything," an anonymous U.S. intelligence official told ABC News. "No one listened."
Source: https://abcnews.go.com/US/afghanistans-collapse-us-intelligence-wrong/story?id=79470553
Well, it makes our problems seem small, in comparison.
Well, for most of us.
You may be interested in what the Chinese state affiliated media are saying:
From: https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202108/1231636.shtml
Note the careful choice of "Once a cross-Straits war breaks out", not "If a cross-Straits war breaks out"...
16 Aug 2021, 11:33 am
magz wrote:
Brictoria wrote:
Interesting...
Source: https://www.thedailybeast.com/russia-is-already-cozying-up-to-the-taliban-as-kabul-spirals
Quote:
Currently, only the embassies of Russia and China are functioning in Afghanistan. Both are being guarded by the Taliban, Russian ambassador to Kabul Dmitry Zhirnov told state TV channel Rossiya-1. “We want Afghanistan to be civilized, so that there is no terrorism, there is no drugs, so that human rights are respected. The Taliban made all the relevant promises to us, let's hope they will be fulfilled,” the ambassador said on Monday.
Source: https://www.thedailybeast.com/russia-is-already-cozying-up-to-the-taliban-as-kabul-spirals
Interesting but, to me, not surprising at all. Why not use the force that already exists?
I'm only a bit worried that Russians may turn the blind eye (or more than this) on training terrorists to attack the "rotten West" again - and of course deny everything when confronted. That would be their style.
Was there any Truth in the story of the Ruskies paying a bounty for any dead Amerians?
It sounds like propaganda to me, but I would put it past putin.
16 Aug 2021, 11:35 am
Pepe wrote:
magz wrote:
Brictoria wrote:
Interesting...
Source: https://www.thedailybeast.com/russia-is-already-cozying-up-to-the-taliban-as-kabul-spirals
Quote:
Currently, only the embassies of Russia and China are functioning in Afghanistan. Both are being guarded by the Taliban, Russian ambassador to Kabul Dmitry Zhirnov told state TV channel Rossiya-1. “We want Afghanistan to be civilized, so that there is no terrorism, there is no drugs, so that human rights are respected. The Taliban made all the relevant promises to us, let's hope they will be fulfilled,” the ambassador said on Monday.
Source: https://www.thedailybeast.com/russia-is-already-cozying-up-to-the-taliban-as-kabul-spirals
Interesting but, to me, not surprising at all. Why not use the force that already exists?
I'm only a bit worried that Russians may turn the blind eye (or more than this) on training terrorists to attack the "rotten West" again - and of course deny everything when confronted. That would be their style.
Was there any Truth in the story of the Ruskies paying a bounty for any dead Amerians?
It sounds like propaganda to me, but I would put it past putin.
This one?
Quote:
The credibility of last summer’s bombshell report alleging the Russian government was paying bounties to Taliban fighters to kill U.S. troops in Afghanistan took another hit this week when a senior Biden administration official told reporters they only have “low-to-moderate confidence” in the intelligence behind the story.
The intelligence was based on notoriously unreliable “detainee reporting,” the official said on the call, meaning that it came from militants looking to get out of jail.
<...>
But the evidence behind the alleged bounties was always weak, and there was no definitive link to the deaths of any U.S. troops. In September, NBC News interviewed General Frank McKenzie, commander of the U.S. Central Command, who said a detailed review of all of the available intelligence was not able to corroborate the existence of a Russian program offering bounties. Contrary to The New York Times, which reported that American intelligence officials had concluded the Russian bounty allegations were true, McKenzie told NBC that the story “has not been proved to a level of certainty that satisfies me.”
“We continue to look for that evidence,” he told NBC News. “I just haven’t seen it yet.”
The intelligence was based on notoriously unreliable “detainee reporting,” the official said on the call, meaning that it came from militants looking to get out of jail.
<...>
But the evidence behind the alleged bounties was always weak, and there was no definitive link to the deaths of any U.S. troops. In September, NBC News interviewed General Frank McKenzie, commander of the U.S. Central Command, who said a detailed review of all of the available intelligence was not able to corroborate the existence of a Russian program offering bounties. Contrary to The New York Times, which reported that American intelligence officials had concluded the Russian bounty allegations were true, McKenzie told NBC that the story “has not been proved to a level of certainty that satisfies me.”
“We continue to look for that evidence,” he told NBC News. “I just haven’t seen it yet.”
Source: https://news.yahoo.com/russian-bounty-story-falls-apart-192123174.html
16 Aug 2021, 11:37 am
Pepe wrote:
Was there any Truth in the story of the Ruskies paying a bounty for any dead Amerians?
It sounds like propaganda to me, but I would put it past putin.
I doubt it very much. Moscow bears are opportunistic omnivores rather than active predators - and Americans leaving Afghanistan is a massive opportunity, with months of preparations giving them months for preparation, too.It sounds like propaganda to me, but I would put it past putin.
I suspect these stories may be sold by Russians, though. They like to play powerful fearmongers.
16 Aug 2021, 11:41 am
Brictoria wrote:
You may be interested in what the Chinese state affiliated media are saying:
From: https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202108/1231636.shtml
Note the careful choice of "Once a cross-Straits war breaks out", not "If a cross-Straits war breaks out"...
America has lost its way and the internal social bickering is only going to hasten its demise.
Presidents like Trump and Biden is an indication of its decline.
"Make America Great Again?"
I have serious doubts about that.
I'm just glad I am getting to the end of my life and hopefully won't have to learn Mandarin.
