BUT LIKE JOSEPH BIDEN HAS SO MUCH FOREIGN EXPERIENCE OR SOMETHING

[Kalam]

Republicans should be a shoe in to win the next election as long as they run someone who isn’t trump. Unfortunately for them that seems unlikely. But they still have three years to get their shit together and dump the team retard platform so we shall see.

Historically foreign policy barely affects elections unless there is a real crisis where Americans are dying or potentially dying. And it has to be serious. Vietnam did in Johnson, but the Iraq fuckup didn’t hurt W (far fewer dying than in Vietnam) and trouncing Iraq didn’t help the elder Bush less than 2 years after he did it. The next election is more than 3 years away. This will mean nothing by then.

Maybe not Afghanistan by itself. But between this, the border shitshow, inflation, the Dem govt getting authoritarian again over covid (lol vaccinated people have to wear masks outdoors in Oregon) everything is lining up nicely for a Republican comeback if they can run a competent candidate. Of course if Trump runs who the hell knows what happens.

I mean the way things are going even Trump might beat Harris in 2024.

[Walter Sobchak]

I know the right wing has been screaming about how the officer that shot Babbitt be named. I guess he outed himself and gave an interview, but no one noticed because of the shitshow going on in Afghanistan. Which I am sure is exactly how the media planned it.

They should have shot more of them rather than let them break in and threaten Congress

[OSA]

Historically foreign policy barely affects elections unless there is a real crisis where Americans are dying or potentially dying. And it has to be serious. Vietnam did in Johnson, but the Iraq fuckup didn’t hurt W (far fewer dying than in Vietnam) and trouncing Iraq didn’t help the elder Bush less than 2 years after he did it. The next election is more than 3 years away. This will mean nothing by then.

Maybe not Afghanistan by itself. But between this, the border shitshow, inflation, the Dem govt getting authoritarian again over covid (lol vaccinated people have to wear masks outdoors in Oregon) everything is lining up nicely for a Republican comeback if they can run a competent candidate. Of course if Trump runs who the hell knows what happens.

I mean the way things are going even Trump might beat Harris in 2024.

[Walter Sobchak]

Maybe not Afghanistan by itself. But between this, the border shitshow, inflation, the Dem govt getting authoritarian again over covid (lol vaccinated people have to wear masks outdoors in Oregon) everything is lining up nicely for a Republican comeback if they can run a competent candidate. Of course if Trump runs who the hell knows what happens.

I mean the way things are going even Trump might beat Harris in 2024.

Tell you what OSA, you go to Afghanistan after August 31 and fuck a member of the Taliban in a porta potty, I pay for the whole trip including a week at Kabul’s best hotel.

[nightmarefish]

Serious question, to date has Harris done anything of value as VP? Anything Walt?

[Walter Sobchak]

Serious question, to date has Harris done anything of value as VP? Anything Walt?

I haven’t been paying attention to her so I don’t know. But it’s only been a few months. The VP is just a weaksauce position. Other than breaking ties in the Senate which is big this Congress, I don’t expect much.

[cleatus]

source The Hill
Between 2003 and 2016, the United States transferred 75,898 vehicles, 599,690 weapons, 162,643 pieces of communications equipment, 208 aircraft, and 16,191 pieces of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance equipment to Afghan forces, according to a 2017 Government Accountability Office report.

From 2017 to 2019, the United States also gave Afghan forces 7,035 machine guns, 4,702 Humvees, 20,040 hand grenades, 2,520 bombs and 1,394 grenade launchers, among other equipment, according to a report last year from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR).

hoping sanlmar also has AM General-humvees. Oshkosh and Navistar as well-mraps.

the old fat cats saying we should've stayed just happen to profit. imagine if full disclosure existed.



or Russell Brand's take. for those who don't trust msm.



gop slogan in 2024. books are dangerous.

[MumblesBadly]

Even better, buy them a long time ago, hold them and collect dividends with automatic reinvestment.

:moneytruck

April 2016 Daly and I were talking about Dividend Reinvenstment Programs DRIPs. I’m no johnny-come-lately to Afghanistan and “the game”.

I snap mention Raytheon.

If you guys had a kid and wanted to set up a DRIP for them what company would you choose?

I did this for my kids 15 years ago. Raytheon was big around Massachusetts, I knew a lot of guys there and they suggested it. It was mostly luck. War was in the air and they did a DRIP. Not a tremendous dividend but the growth was a double.

A female friend from high school friend is an engineer who worked for Raytheon for at least a decade in missile design, and probably helped design some that were used in the war in Afghanistan. Back in the day, she was a quite the peace-loving liberal. How careerism can dramatically change people is amazing, no?

[Cerveza Fria]

Here’s all the US military equipment that likely ended up in Taliban hands

Full article here:https://taskandpurpose.com/news/tali...s-afghanistan/


The Biden administration admitted on Tuesday that the Taliban had captured a significant amount of U.S. military equipment originally supplied to Afghan security forces during the militants’ blitzkrieg on Kabul in recent weeks — and the U.S. doesn’t know exactly how much American gear they’ve lost to terrorist hands.
“We don’t have a complete picture, obviously, of where every article of defense materials has gone but certainly, a fair amount of it has fallen into the hands of the Taliban,” White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said during a press conference. “​​Obviously, we don’t have a sense that they are going to readily hand it over to us at the airport.”


Indeed, photos published by newswires like the Associated Press and circulated on social media by eyewitnesses to the Taliban sweep of Kabul show militant fighters touting M4 and M16 rifles, M24 sniper rifle systems, and M2 .50 caliber machine guns. Other footage showed night vision goggles, radios, and magazine pouches apparently seized from Afghan outposts during the Taliban offensive, which also saw militants seize military vehicles like Humvees and MRAPs.

Here’s all the US military equipment that likely ended up in Taliban hands
Taliban fighters stand guard at an entrance gate outside the Interior Ministry in Kabul on August 17, 2021. (Photo by Javed Tanveer / AFP via Getty Images)
While Sullivan did not specify what a “fair amount” of defense materials entailed, he had previously blamed the members of the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) for laying down their arms before the Taliban onslaught, stating that the U.S.’s $86 billion in funding over the last two decades “could not give them the will and ultimately they decided that they would not fight for Kabul.”

At the moment, there’s still a lot that senior U.S. officials don’t know about American weapons falling into the hands of the Taliban. But based on past reporting from U.S. government watchdogs, the militant group may have inherited a broad arsenal of American weapons from the hands of fleeing Afghan security forces.


According to a 2017 Government Accountability Office report, the U.S. military transferred roughly 75,898 vehicles, 599,690 weapons systems, and 208 aircraft to the ANDSF between fiscal years 2003 and 2016. And according to a recent Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction analysis, the last few years have seen the Defense Department send the ANDSF more than 7,000 machine guns, more than 4,700 Humvees, and more than 20,000 grenades. This is to say nothing of the communications, explosive ordnance disposal, and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) equipment transferred to the ANDSF over the course of two decades as detailed in the GAO report. According to the Intercept, the Taliban have even seized U.S. military biometrics devices “that could aid in the identification of Afghans who assisted coalition forces.”

Here’s all the US military equipment that likely ended up in Taliban hands
(Government Accountability Office)
That American weapons are falling into the hands of the very militants they were intended to kill is nothing new. A 2016 Pentagon audit revealed that poor record-keeping and regulations had allowed nearly half of the 1.5 million weapons provided to Iraqi and Afghan security forces since 2002 to go missing, including nearly 978,000 M4 and M16s, while a 2014 SIGAR report found that some 43 percent of weapons provided to the ANDSF likely ended up in the hands of groups like the Taliban or ISIS. There is also plenty of ammo missing from former Afghan government stockpiles.

That said, not all of this captured gear will see combat again. Captured UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters the Taliban paraded on social media during the group’s march on Kabul, for example, are both unflyable and outright unsustainable due to a lack of training, spare parts, and logistics required to operate such advanced equipment, as Defense One astutely noted on Friday.


Still, the overwhelming volume of American small arms and other weaponry captured from Afghan military outposts by the Taliban is still a major propaganda victory for the group, if anything. Indeed, the militant group has taken pains to parade captured U.S. military gear — including rare weapons like the U.S. special operations forces FN-SCAR — in videos showcasing their capabilities. Several Taliban fighters had American-made weapons on display when they were pictured sitting in the presidential palace.

Here’s all the US military equipment that likely ended up in Taliban hands
Taliban fighters take control of Afghan presidential palace after the Afghan President Ashraf Ghani fled the country, in Kabul, Afghanistan, Sunday, Aug. 15, 2021. (Associated Press/Zabi Karimi)
When pressed on the matter of U.S. equipment falling into enemy hands on Friday, prior to Kabul’s fall, the Pentagon appeared unprepared to address the potential issues. “We are always worried about U.S. equipment that could fall into an adversaries’ hands,” Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby said at the time. “What actions we might take to prevent that or to forestall it, I just simply won’t speculate about today.”

But days later, when asked if U.S. troops were taking action “to prevent equipment from falling into the hands of the Taliban by destroying it” during a Tuesday press conference, Maj. Gen. Hank Taylor of the Joint Staff provided a dismally simple response: “I don’t have the answer to that question.”

[BetCheckBet]

Republicans should be a shoe in to win the next election as long as they run someone who isn’t trump. Unfortunately for them that seems unlikely. But they still have three years to get their shit together and dump the team retard platform so we shall see.

Historically foreign policy barely affects elections unless there is a real crisis where Americans are dying or potentially dying. And it has to be serious. Vietnam did in Johnson, but the Iraq fuckup didn’t hurt W (far fewer dying than in Vietnam) and trouncing Iraq didn’t help the elder Bush less than 2 years after he did it. The next election is more than 3 years away. This will mean nothing by then.

Problem is this is tied to 9-11 which makes it much more sentimental for Americans. Taliban now has ten of billions of American weapons. God forbid what intelligence was left behind. They can either shop these to other countries of eventually gun down a us contractor with a black hawk.

Housing and wall street have good chance of crashing.

Inflation is very scary.

Biden isn’t senile but he is not far from it and only getting worse.

There continues to be a huge social divide regarding dem policies that don’t sit well with centrists. Hell my one year old daughter just attended a library story time where the instructor introduced herself with pronouns. There was some rainbow sound about pride and a story was out a prince marrying a knight. I’m fairly socially liberal but this sort of stuff makes a lot of 40 plus people feel weird. If I felt awkward I can only imagine what the average person would think.

Don’t get me started on covid and what a shit show that’s become and likely will be for years.

It’s hard to look at the next three years and see a lot of positives on the horizon for the dems.

I really beleive only way republicans lose is by running and extremely polarizing figure like trump who also will be deteriorating mentally over the next 3 years. Let’s face it no one over 75 should be running a country or probably any major position of power. There is just too much evidence about natural cognitive decline.

Also the way things are going I don’t expect dems to run Harris. She has horrible opinion ratings and again unless things change for this administration that won’t change.

[Kalam]

I know the right wing has been screaming about how the officer that shot Babbitt be named. I guess he outed himself and gave an interview, but no one noticed because of the shitshow going on in Afghanistan. Which I am sure is exactly how the media planned it.

They should have shot more of them rather than let them break in and threaten Congress

Well, that isn't exactly what I was commenting on.

I just found it amusing the right has been demanding the officer be outed, so they could make a big news story out of it. And then the left purposefully did it on a giant news day so it would have minimum impact.

I suspect Fox was threatening to out the officer if the left didn't do it by a certain date anyways, and the left was just waiting for a big news day so they could do it with minimal impact.

[sonatine]

i think this is the first time the media has banged the drum for war this hard and somehow no ones falling for it.

BIDEN: PLANS ARE BEING DISCUSSED TO ENSURE THAT IRAN DOES NOT ACQUIRE NUCLEAR WEAPONS.


ok boomer.

[BCR]

They should have shot more of them rather than let them break in and threaten Congress

Well, that isn't exactly what I was commenting on.

I just found it amusing the right has been demanding the officer be outed, so they could make a big news story out of it. And then the left purposefully did it on a giant news day so it would have minimum impact.

I suspect Fox was threatening to out the officer if the left didn't do it by a certain date anyways, and the left was just waiting for a big news day so they could do it with minimal impact.

Who cares? That means they were attempting to protect a hero from loons.

Dude should be given a medal. They had gallows on the lawn of the Capitol. Some were just random tards strolling through the Capitol. I would have been for shooting them all, but there would be an argument there that it was improper.

That group in the hall were smashing windows, ignoring warnings from police, fighting with the officers on the front line who had to deal with the dirty droolers and attempting to get to elected officials that they planned on hanging on said gallows. That was their stated goal, these people in that hallway weren’t casuals, they were the true nutjobs unafraid of the police aiming guns at them and repeated warnings. They were attempting to get to the next level and were about to succeed.

The officers who had a sworn duty to protect the elected officials, and most of the crowd wanted Pence, and did their duty after attempting to disperse them to no avail. Guess what, it worked. He dropped some trashbag and the rest quit. Total success. One less trashbag and the crowd got the message.

[Walter Sobchak]

Well, that isn't exactly what I was commenting on.

I just found it amusing the right has been demanding the officer be outed, so they could make a big news story out of it. And then the left purposefully did it on a giant news day so it would have minimum impact.

I suspect Fox was threatening to out the officer if the left didn't do it by a certain date anyways, and the left was just waiting for a big news day so they could do it with minimal impact.

Who cares? That means they were attempting to protect a hero from loons.

Dude should be given a medal. They had gallows on the lawn of the Capitol. Some were just random tards strolling through the Capitol. I would have been for shooting them all, but there would be an argument there that it was improper.

That group in the hall were smashing windows, ignoring warnings from police, fighting with the officers on the front line who had to deal with the dirty droolers and attempting to get to elected officials that they planned on hanging on said gallows. That was their stated goal, these people in that hallway weren’t casuals, they were the true nutjobs unafraid of the police aiming guns at them and repeated warnings. They were attempting to get to the next level and were about to succeed.

The officers who had a sworn duty to protect the elected officials, and most of the crowd wanted Pence, and did their duty after attempting to disperse them to no avail. Guess what, it worked. He dropped some trashbag and the rest quit. Total success. One less trashbag and the crowd got the message.

If they were black they would have been absolutely massacred.

[nightmarefish]

Why are you guys talking about 1/6/21?

Why are you saying more people would have died if they were black Walt? You must have missed all last summer watching 100s of thousands of black people riot and attack police officers without getting shot.

If one of your first reactions is to talk about 1/6/21 right after a bombing in Afghanistan then you have a real problem.

[sonatine]

Why are you guys talking about 1/6/21?

Why are you saying more people would have died if they were black Walt? You must have missed all last summer watching 100s of thousands of black people riot and attack police officers without getting shot.

If one of your first reactions is to talk about 1/6/21 right after a bombing in Afghanistan then you have a real problem.

i feel like youre on the verge of having an important epiphany about why the sites current regs post here.

[Cerveza Fria]

Why are you guys talking about 1/6/21?

Why are you saying more people would have died if they were black Walt? You must have missed all last summer watching 100s of thousands of black people riot and attack police officers without getting shot.

If one of your first reactions is to talk about 1/6/21 right after a bombing in Afghanistan then you have a real problem.

i feel like youre on the verge of having an important epiphany about why the sites current regs post here.

[MumblesBadly]

John Bolton joins other former Trump administration members in throwing Trump under the bus re why the Afghan government collapsed so quickly. (Hint: It was all about what was implied by Team Trump’s negotiations with the the Taliban last year.

[Walter Sobchak]

Why are you guys talking about 1/6/21?

Why are you saying more people would have died if they were black Walt? You must have missed all last summer watching 100s of thousands of black people riot and attack police officers without getting shot.

If one of your first reactions is to talk about 1/6/21 right after a bombing in Afghanistan then you have a real problem.

It was a response to Kalam, who brought it up.

[Walter Sobchak]

John Bolton joins other former Trump administration members in throwing Trump under the bus re why the Afghan government collapsed so quickly. (Hint: It was all about what was implied by Team Trump’s negotiations with the the Taliban last year.

Like I said, this is all Trump’s fault.

All of it.