Kabul is a huge city. Wasn't 6k troops sent to secure the airport? Would take much more troops and time to secure the whole city.
People just talk out of their ass without any prior knowledge. Kabul was going through the worst crime spree in 7 years this past year. Homicides and theft were up over 800%. Their plan is to have us troops secure kabul which would take 50k+ troops and have us conducting security in a city that is going through a regime change. We tried this in Baghdad before and it took over 100k troops to secure the city. The smartest decision we made was to only secure the airport and set up land to air missle systems (C-RAM) to intercept any aerial threats. People talk about baghram airbase without even having the slightest fkin clue how dangerous the roads are leading to the airbase. American troops use to call baghram, "snipers gallery" as it was ideal for snipers to target members leaving the airbase. The one lane road leading up the base would have been impossible to transfer 100k persons sucessfully. The other solution is to air lift all the folks from kabul to airbase which even be dumber as all it takes is one RPG and you have a black hawk down. Theres no good alternatives or solutions to what we did. If there was Trump would've done it already. People have been blinded by whats really happening in Afghanistan so they talk about these dumb hypotheticals without literally having basic knowledge of the geography or land. The ONLY mistake Biden did was to have US troops secure the outside gates of the airport. We should've let Taliban handle that or outsourced that to mercenaries. This would've prevented us from losing those soliders that died but playing monday morning quarterback is easy.
People in here whining ignored all the US casualties under Trump's watch in Afghanistan, but suddenly are up in arms? Come on, no one is buying your BS. DD
Voters already "reasonably" prove who they are when they vote. Adding an additional burden of proof in response to unproven (in fact, disproven) accusations of voter fraud is not reasonable. Just as all other republican efforts to make voting more difficult (especially for people they believe don't vote for republicans). Instead, we should be opening up the democratic process to more people by making voting easier to do.
I think we are getting the answer to the question of why they chose Kabul airport rather than Bagram airbase. Not that Bagram didn’t have a defense system but the fact that Kabul had a much more advanced one then they advertised. Being located within car ride or walking distance from the vast majority of the citizens with multiple entrances they could divert to under attack seems to be the primary reason but this defense system being there was likely the key that made them feel like they had the tools there. My guess is these attacks will just get more and more prevalent until the end of the day Tomm when we are all the way out.
The car had bombs in it which created a secondary explosion. The type of missle used was a rx9 which is a new tech drone missle that releases steel blades right before impact that crushes the object. This is different then typical missles that have some sort of nuclear reaction which causes an explosion. The missle hit the car which had explosives which caused a secondary explosion. Biden didn't bomb some house or apartment. He ordered a precise type of drone that would minimize civilian casualties. Biden did the right thing by ordering it as it confirmed the suspect had bombs in the car. The afghanis should be mad at ISIS not Biden. Biden probably saved 100+ Afghan lives yesterday. War is ugly
Its just funny how the media and deep state have completely turned on biden spinning conspiracies and bs everywhere. MSNBC/CNN shills out "Afghan Civilians are going die", fear mongering non stop while foxnews brings out 2004 Iraq war generals to tell us how we're about to have another 9/11. It's so sickening to see how the entire media establishment is nothing but a PR wing for the deep state. Politico ran a story that had over 7 million clicks on it talking about how biden gave taliban an entire list of American SIV applicants in kabul . It was trending everywhere on right wing. Turns out the story was fake. Nobody ever reads the corrections. Once you plants those seeds people's conspiracies go crazy. The media is so evil and sick
First, let’s be clear that the vast majority of Americans support voter ID requirements. 80% according to recent poll: https://www.forbes.com/sites/alison...rried-about-fraud-poll-finds/?sh=2f0ed61a1e0b Part of the strategy of making voting “easier” is putting a voter ID in the hand of every eligible voter. I support the work done by this organization: https://www.spreadthevote.org/about They operate on a relatively tiny budget and have helped thousands of voters get an ID. But millions still don’t have them, as described in: https://www.theatlantic.com/politic...opy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share That’s where Democrats should focus. Way more resources should be poured into doing the type of work that organization is doing. Getting legitimate forms of ID in everyone’s hands is not simply about making elections more secure. It also protects voters against states tightening voting restrictions.
Over 80% of Americans support a number of gun laws that don't exist. *IF* mandatory voter IDs do happen to increase voting (I don't believe they do, but if someone can prove it does, I'd be happy to see that proof) then the requirement would be implementing a process to get the IDs in everyone's hands BEFORE requiring them... not the reverse. And at least in Texas, its not the responsibility of the minority party to ensure IDs are in everyone's hands. The fact that republicans are rushing voter ID laws out in order to tip the elective scales in their favor (presenting the false argument of election security) simply shows how voter ID laws will be implemented.
Jake Tapper basically tells on the media here when he calls out how this story started. "A Pentagon Official" is who is quoted here in the news story, and that's about it. There are how many Pentagon "officials" again? You think there is not one single person there who is against backing out of Afghanistan? Nobody not one single person has political leanings to use hyperbole because they have animus towards the Biden team? When you hear what Sullivan was describing, yes you could get from A to Z with enough people playing telephone and oversimplifying the strategy from person to person. But when you actually realize the strategy that they are executing it's a completely different situation than what the media is portraying. I'll even admit that the media did this with Trump too. Some stories were obvious that Trump is doing something bizarre or corrupt, and there was no room for hyperbole. Sometimes it was obviously coming from in the room when he was quote (AKA Sh$thole countries) and he wouldn't even deny it. But then there were times where quoted from a source who was obviously hearing something 2nd or 3rd hand, and it really wasn't much of a threat to our day to day lives when you put it in context. There is no shortage of things to be outraged by with our government in America. But the media really sucks at it's job, and acts much more like TMZ than the BBC. If and when our democracy truly is unrecognizable as a democracy anymore, at the top of that list for numerous reasons will be the failures of media to take seriously their role that was carved out in our constitution.
There’s a rush to dissect and criticize when all the verifiable information isn’t in yet. There will likely be investigations into what all happened that will uncover all the pertinent facts. I’d rather wait until that point to really judge where the mistakes were made.
Its not the media, they are doing their job, they are competing for eyeballs.....it is up to us to think for ourselves. DD
Agree. Media does media things. There is no way to control that. but we can use our filters. Extremely disappointed with the kill list reporting. Few days back in one of the pressers, they cleared explained what they gave to Taliban as a list. A named list of individuals beyond checkpoint that need to be brought in to airport. This turned into a world wide news event of US gave Taliban list of all evacuees. I mean, I get the sensationalism part but this is irresponsibility. Press should hold the government accountable but with some clarity in facts.
NYTimes reporting the U.S. drone strike killed ten members of one family including seven children https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/0...ers-were-killed-in-a-us-drone-strike-in-kabul A family says 10 of its members were killed in a U.S. drone strike in Kabul. Hours after a U.S. military drone strike in Kabul on Sunday, Defense Department officials said that it had blown up a vehicle laden with explosives, eliminating a threat to Kabul’s airport from the Islamic State Khorasan group. But at a family home in Kabul on Monday, survivors and neighbors said the strike had killed 10 people, including seven children, an aid worker for an American charity organization and a contractor with the U.S. military. Zemari Ahmadi, who worked for the charity organization Nutrition and Education International, was on his way home from work after dropping off colleagues on Sunday evening, according to relatives and colleagues interviewed in Kabul. As he pulled into the narrow street where he lived with his three brothers and their families, the children, seeing his white Toyota Corolla, ran outside to greet him. Some clambered aboard in the street, others gathered around as he pulled the car into the courtyard of their home. It was then that they say the drone struck. The missile hit the rear end of the Corolla in the narrow courtyard inside the walled family compound, blowing out doors, shattering windows and spraying shrapnel. Mr. Ahmadi and some of the children were killed inside his car; others were fatally wounded in adjacent rooms, family members said. An Afghan official confirmed that three of the dead children were transferred by ambulance from the home on Sunday. Mr. Ahmadi’s daughter Samia, 21, was inside when she was struck by the blast wave. “At first I thought it was the Taliban,” she said. “But the Americans themselves did it.” Samia said she staggered outside, choking, and saw the bodies of her siblings and relatives. “I saw the whole scene,” she said. “There were burnt pieces of flesh everywhere.” Among the dead was her fiancé, Ahmad Naser, 30, a former army officer and contractor with the U.S. military who had come from Herat, in western Afghanistan, in the hopes of being evacuated from Kabul. A spokesman for the U.S. Central Command said on Sunday that the U.S. military had carried out a drone strike against an Islamic State Khorasan vehicle planning to attack Hamid Karzai International Airport. The group had claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing at the airport on Thursday. On Monday, Capt. Bill Urban, the spokesman, reaffirmed an earlier statement that the military hit a valid target, an explosives-laden vehicle. He also repeated that the military was investigating claims of civilian casualties. Mr. Ahmadi was a technical engineer for the local office of Nutrition and Education International, an American nonprofit based in Pasadena, Calif. His neighbors and relatives insisted that the engineer and his family members, many of whom had worked for the Afghan security forces, had no connection to any terrorist group. They provided documents related to his long employment with the American charity, as well as Mr. Naser’s application for a Special Immigrant Visa, based on his service as a guard at Camp Lawton, in Herat. “He was well respected by his colleagues and compassionate towards the poor and needy,” Steven Kwon, the president of NEI, said of Mr. Ahmadi in an email. He wrote that Mr. Ahmadi had just recently “prepared and delivered soy-based meals to hungry women and children at local refugee camps in Kabul.” Najim Rahim, Helene Cooper and Eric Schmitt contributed reporting. — Matthieu Aikins
****. I was worried about that. There were reportedly other missiles being fired by militants. It won't matter to the people who lost loved ones, but I hope this wasn't due to the drone strike.
