re: Taliban has taken Kabul. Terrorist attack at Airport at least 12 marines confirmed killed

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Afghanistan will turn into North Korea and will be impossible to get info out. It will be an intelligence black hole.

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You may be right on that going forward. But, I thought this was fascinating.

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In light of all this, it is simply inconceivable that Biden’s false statements last month about the readiness of the Afghan military and police force were anything but intentional. That is particularly true given how heavily the U.S. had Afghanistan under every conceivable kind of electronic surveillance for more than a decade. A significant portion of the archive provided to me by Edward Snowden detailed the extensive surveillance the NSA had imposed on all of Afghanistan. In accordance with the guidelines he required, we never published most of those documents about U.S. surveillance in Afghanistan on the ground that it could endanger people without adding to the public interest, but some of the reporting gave a glimpse into just how comprehensively monitored the country was by U.S. security services.

In 2014, I reported along with Laura Poitras and another journalist that the NSA had developed the capacity, under the codenamed SOMALGET, that empowered them to be “secretly intercepting, recording, and archiving the audio of virtually every cell phone conversation” in at least five countries. At any time, they could listen to the stored conversations of any calls conducted by cell phone throughout the entire country. Though we published the names of four countries in which the program had been implemented, we withheld, after extensive internal debate at The Intercept, the identity of the fifth — Afghanistan — because the NSA had convinced some editors that publishing it would enable the Taliban to know where the program was located and it could endanger the lives of the military and private-sector employees working on it (in general, at Snowden’s request, we withheld publication of documents about NSA activities in active war zones unless they revealed illegality or other deceit). But WikiLeaks subsequently revealed, accurately, that the one country whose identity we withheld where this program was implemented was Afghanistan.

There was virtually nothing that could happen in Afghanistan without the U.S. intelligence community’s knowledge. There is simply no way that they got everything so completely wrong while innocently and sincerely trying to tell Americans the truth about what was happening there.

In sum, U.S. political and military leaders have been lying to the American public for two decades about the prospects for success in Afghanistan generally, and the strength and capacity of the Afghan security forces in particular — up through five weeks ago when Biden angrily dismissed the notion that U.S. withdrawal would result in a quick and complete Taliban takeover. Numerous documents, largely ignored by the public, proved that U.S. officials knew what they were saying was false — just as happened so many times in prior wars — and even deliberately doctored information to enable their lies.

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Greenwald: the U.S. govt lied for two decades about Afghanistan.

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No one will be allowed to use narcotics anymore.
2. The smuggling of drugs is now prohibited.
3. Afghanistan will be a narcotics free country.
4. The Country will focus on cultivating alternative crops

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Damn....what did those people have going for them other than opium???

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fricking ouch....

@RupertStone83
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Al Jazeera anchor notes that, unlike Biden yesterday, Mujahid took questions after his speech.

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The Tollybahn has been visible and prepared for dialog while the POTUS remains out of sight at Camp David.

It took our Prez 3 days to come forward with a 10 minute presser and was worthless. Then he chose to return to CD rather than remain at his office in the WH working round the clock to get our people out of that hell hole.

Need to close all US bases abroad and bring all troops home.

Then, audit the funds that were spent on this war and find out where the hell they went.

I can guarantee most never left the beltway.

Interesting note:

Saleh has declared himself President of Afghanistan, pending "a new election". This following reports and video of him in the North rallying support and troops. I guess this is another piece that sets the stage for all out civil war.

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The Taliban just had their first press conference and they issued a strong edict:
1. No one will be allowed to use narcotics anymore.
2. The smuggling of drugs is now prohibited.
3. Afghanistan will be a narcotics free country.
4. The Country will focus on cultivating alternative crops.

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Theyre about to be a country of rare earth minerals courtesy of China

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The real question would be who fed him that and to what end?

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If you want to get in the deep waters of conspiracy, look to those members of the Administration who have close ties to china.

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If you want to get in the deep waters of conspiracy, look to those members of the Administration who have close ties to china.

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1. No one will be allowed to use narcotics anymore.
2. The smuggling of drugs is now prohibited.
3. Afghanistan will be a narcotics free country.

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(crosses off list)

Germany had a fairly substantial Bundeswehr presence there and just their employees could fill those planes if all the Bundeswehr personnel have left. Anyone who wasn't on the payrole but associated with them may be SOL.