Don’t You Ever Forget”: Biden Enrages Gold Star Parents Of Slain Marines
BY TYLER DURDENTUESDAY, AUG 31, 2021 – 10:45 AM
After the Biden administration royally botched the Afghanistan pullout that they had seven months to plan for, the parents of marines slain in last week’s terrorist bombing outside the Kabul airport are livid.
In an obvious attempt to avoid yet another optics nightmare, President Biden made his way on Sunday to Dover Air Force Base, where he spoke privately with the families of the deceased – whose remains were flown in from Afghanistan.
The parents weren’t having it, according to the Washington Post.
Not only did Biden reportedly check his watch multiple times…
Gold Star Father Darin Hoover, whose son Marine Staff Sgt. Taylor Hoover was killed in Kabul, alleges that President Biden looked down at his watch when all 13 fallen service members arrived at Dover Air Force Base:
…he repeatedly invoked his own son, Beau, who died six years ago of brain cancer and served in the Delaware National Guard.
As WaPo notes:
Mark Schmitz had told a military officer the night before that he wasn’t much interested in speaking to a president he did not vote for, one whose execution of the Afghan pullout he disdains — and one he now blames for the death of his 20-year-old son Jared.
Schmitz did not want to hear about Beau, he wanted to talk about Jared. Eventually, the parents took out a photo to show to Biden. “I said, ‘Don’t you ever forget that name. Don’t you ever forget that face. Don’t you ever forget the names of the other 12,’ ” Schmitz said. “ ‘And take some time to learn their stories.’ ”
Biden did not seem to like that, Schmitz recalled, and he bristled, offering a blunt response: “I do know their stories.”
“When he just kept talking about his son so much it was just — my interest was lost in that. I was more focused on my own son than what happened with him and his son,” said Schmitz. “I’m not trying to insult the president, but it just didn’t seem that appropriate to spend that much time on his own son.”
“…when you’re the one responsible for ultimately the way things went down, you kind of feel like that person should own it a little bit more. Our son is now gone. Because of a direct decision or game plan — or lack thereof — that he put in place.”
Another Gold Star parent, Shana Chappell, wrote such a scathing indictment of Biden that Facebook and Instagram have reportedly disabled her accounts.
President Joe BidenJoe Biden This msg is for you! I know my face is etched into your brain! I was able to look you straight in the eyes yesterday and have words with you. After i lay my son to rest you will be seeing me again! Remember i am the one who stood 5 inches from your face and was letting you know i would never get to hug my son again, hear his laugh and then you tried to interrupt me and give me your own sob story and i had to tell you “that this isn’t about you so don’t make it about you!!!” You then said you just wanted me to know that you know how i feel and i let you know that you don’t know how i feel and you do not have the right to tell me you know how i feel! U then rolled your fucking eyes in your head like you were annoyed with me and i let you know that the only reason i was talking to you was out of respect for my son and that was the only reason why, i then proceeded to tell you again how you took my son away from me and how i will never get to hug him, kiss him, laugh with him again etc… u turned to walk away and i let you know my sons blood was on your hands and you threw your hand up behind you as you walked away from me like you were saying “ ok whatever!!! You are not the president of the United States of America Biden!!!! Cheating isn’t winning!!!You are no leader of any kind! You are a weak human being and a traitor!!!! You turned your back on my son, on all of our Heros!!! you are leaving the White House one way or another because you do not belong there!MY SONS BLOOD IS ON YOUR HANDS!!! All 13 of them, their blood is on your hands!!!! If my president Trump was in his rightful seat then my son and the other Heros would still be alive!!!! You will be seeing me again very soon!!! Btw as my son and the rest of our fallen Heros were being taken off the plane yesterday i watched you disrespect us all 5 different times by checking your watch!!! What the fuck was so important that you had to keep looking at your watch????You are nobody special Biden!!! America Hates you!!!!!
$FB has decided to censor the mother of a fallen Marine. The middle class parents of kids that are used as chattel for the elite wars don’t get a voice apparently.
This company is an extension of the security state. Tyranny is here and this act of censorship is proof.
— Ed ☯️ The Obsolete Man…a Free Thinker (@DowdEdward) August 31, 2021
Another Gold Star family – relatives of Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Rylee McCollum, did not want to meet with Biden.
“McCollum’s sisters and father joined his widow, Jiennah McCollum, on the trip to Dover — but when it came time to meet Biden, only Jiennah went in,” according to WaPo.
One of McCollum’s sisters felt Biden’s words were ‘scripted and shallow,’ and a conversation which only lasted a couple of minutes in “total disregard to the loss of our Marine — our brother, son, husband and father.”
“It had to be one of the hardest things he’s ever had to do,” said Schmitz. “You make some calls, here’s the aftereffect. It’s got to be difficult. I’m not saying it was easy at all. But you can’t run up and hug someone as if you had nothing to do with it. It’s not going to work that way when you’re commander in chief.”
Having consulted for a long time, you get a sense of who’s competent and who’s not. Who’s a scammer and who’s trying to do it right – doing it right meaning take care of the client and your people, getting them into a self-sustaining mode, then “get out of Dodge.”
That’s the essence of a sustainable business – one that grows, brings its people along with it, and puts the consultant where she belongs — teacher and advisor – not embedded in the operation.
A good consultant is a trusted advisor. A good company offers mature products that the customer can maintain and adapt to their circumstances. These are core competencies of a sustainable business.
You have to know how to make your own bed. For exmaple, every company needs to reorganize some aspect of its business — if you need McKinsey to tell you how to do it, you’re toast.
When your products require endless support for “customer success”, they are not serving the customer’s needs. Which makes that aspect of their business (and yours) is unsustainable.
Simple mathematics.
When a company is no longer sustainable, put it on your “short” list. Not that you short it immediately — but you will eventually clear your long position and start placing shorts.
It may be instructive for us all on how NOT to do something.
The War in Afghanistan Is What Happens When McKinsey Types Run Everything
An Afghan General blames defense contractors for the collapse of the Afghan army. A government inspector blames the “the pervasiveness of overoptimism” by U.S. generals. It’s all that, and more.
I had a piece ready to go on Lina Khan’s attempt to break up Facebook, but I think it’s more important to talk about the competence problems revealed by the war in Afghanistan. There are monopoly elements involved, but there is a more basic question at work that keeps coming up, whether it’s the Boeing 737 Max, opioids, Covid mismanagement, or anything else of social importance. Do we have the competence to govern ourselves anymore? There’s also a follow-on question. Will this loss spur genuine reform of our McKinsey-ified elites who failed so spectacularly?
Also:
Other People’s Money, or why Wall Street itself is getting ripped off by a monopolist that charges 25 cents to send an email to investors.
Other People’s Money, or why does getting an email of your college transcript cost $9?
In Texas, hospitals are using Covid to try and suppress nurse wages.
What happened when the Centers for Disease Control hired Boston Consulting Group to run their vaccine rollout?
Sony builds an anime monopoly.
This is my first newsletter in three weeks. I was on vacation. I won’t normally have absences like this, but honestly, I was burned out. Don’t worry, I’m refreshed, and I have a good issue queued up for early next week, and some fun ideas going forward.
And now…
War Machine, starring Brad PItt.
“The Pervasiveness of Over-Optimism”
In 2017, Netflix put out a satirical movie on the conflict in Afghanistan. It was titled War Machine, and it starred Brad Pitt as an exuberant and deluded U.S. General named Glen McMahon. A fitness fanatic nicknamed ‘the Glanimal’ by his crew of adoring frathouse henchmen, McMahon is modeled on the real-life military leader Stanley McChrystal, who ran the surge in Afghanistan before being fired for saying disparaging things about Obama administration officials (including then VP Biden) on the record to Rolling Stone magazine.
In War Machine, McMahan comes to Afghanistan with a spirited can do attitude and a frat house of hard-partying yes-men, after having ‘kicked Al Qaeda in the sack’ running special operations in Iraq. He is obsessed with inspirational speeches and weird bureaucratic box-ticking, under the amorphous concept of leadership. This kind of leadership, though, isn’t actually working with wisdom and foresight, but is more like management consulting. Prior to arriving in Afghanistan, for instance, McMahan created a system, with the acronym SNORPP to coordinate military assets. At night, he cozies down to read books on management excellence, the kind that Harvard Business Review publishes as sort of Chicken Soup for the Executive’s Soul. He is also the author of a fictional book with the amazing title, “One Leg At a Time: Just Like Everybody Else.”
And yet his mission is unwinnable, which everyone seems to understand except him and his small team. McMahan constantly makes awkward speeches that make no sense, with the tone used by untrusted executives at corporate retreats. “We are here to build, to protect, to support the civilian population,” he told his troops. “To that end, we must avoid killing it at all costs. We cannot help them and kill them at the same time, it just ain’t humanly possible.” His character reflects what the actual government watchdog charged with overseeing the war in Afghanistan called one of the central problems with the U.S. effort, “the pervasiveness of over-optimism:”
If McMahan himself is a naive fool, he is surrounded by cynical bureaucratic opponents. As he seeks support for his new strategy of putting troops in Taliban-held provinces, he is gently ignored by the President of Afghanistan, who is a drug-addicted hypochondriac, and mocked by State Department and national security apparatchiks, who are striving cynics urging McMahon to just falsify numbers to make the war look a little better and not embarrass President Obama. Troops on the ground are demoralized and confused. No one actually believes in the mission, but dammit, McMahon is gonna get it done, whatever ‘it’ is. When McMahon tries to give an inspirational speech to ordinary Afghanis in Taliban-controlled territory about how the U.S. is going to bring them jobs and schools, one responds by saying he like jobs and schools, but please go away so the Taliban won’t retaliate. “The longer you are here the worse for us. Please go.”
It’s a hilarious, and extraordinarily dark movie. It also rang true, because it was based on the work of no-bullshit journalist Michael Hastings, who was perhaps the most honest reporter about the military establishment. And, as life is true to fiction, McChrystal, the general who Hastings profiled in Rolling Stone with an embarrassing story that led to his resignation, is now a management consultant (and board member of defense contractors). He runs inspirational ‘leadership training’ at the McChrystal Group, which is McKinsey with military branding.
In fact, McChrystal and much of our military leadership is tight with consultants like McKinsey, and that whole diseased culture from Harvard Business School of pervasive over-optimism and finance-venture capital monopoly bro-a-thons. McKinsey itself had involvement in Afghanistan, with at least one $18.6 million contract to help the Defense Department define its “strategic focus,” though government watchdogs found that the “only output [they] could find” was a 50-page report about strategic economic development potential in Herat, a province in western Afghanistan.” It turns out that ‘strategic focus’ means an $18.6 million PowerPoint. (There was reporting on this contract because Pete Buttigieg worked on it as a junior analyst at McKinsey, and he has failed upward to run the Transportation Department.)
I bring War Machine up because of today’s debate over Afghanistan. While there is a lot of back and forth about whether intelligence agencies knew that the Taliban would take over, or what would happen if we left, or whether the withdrawal could be done more competently, all you had to do to know that this war was a shitshow based on deception and idiocy at all levels was to turn on Netflix and watch this movie. Or you could read any number of inspector general reports, leaked documents, articles, talk to any number of veterans, or use common sense, which, polling showed, most Americans did. (Marine vet Lucas Kunce gives a nice rundown of the problem in this interview). I mean, it’s not like a major international media outlet printed a multi-part expose, which became a handy book, detailing the fact that everyone running the show knew it was an unwinnable mess nearly a decade ago. Oh, wait
In other words, the war in Afghanistan is like seeing management consultants come to your badly managed software company where everyone knows the problem is the boss’s indecisiveness and cowardice, except it’s violent and people die.
I mean, U.S. military leaders, like bad consultants or executives, lied about Afghanistan to the point it was routine. Here are just a few quotes from generals and DOD spokesmen over the years on the strength of the Afghan military, which collapsed almost instantly after the U.S. left.
In 2011, General David Petraeus stated, “Investments in leader development, literacy, marksmanship and institutions have yielded significant dividends. In fact, in the hard fighting west of Kandahar in late 2010, Afghan forces comprised some 60% of the overall force and they fought with skill and courage.”
In 2015, General John Campbell said that the the Afghan Army had “proven themselves to be increasingly capable,” that they had “grown and matured in less than a decade into a modern, professional force,” and, further, that they had “proven that they can and will take the tactical fight from here.”
In 2017, General John Nicholson stated that Afghan security forces had “prevailed in combat against an externally enabled enemy,” and that the army’s “ability to face simultaneity and complexity on the battlefield signals growth in capability.”
On July 11, 2021, Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said that the Afghan army has “much more capacity than they’ve ever had before, much more capability,” and asserted, “they know how to defend their country.”
Basically, look at this photo below, imagine them in camouflage, and that’s the U.S. military leadership.
The Withdrawal Anger Is *Embarrassment*
There are significant recriminations over the embarrassing media stories on the withdrawal from Afghanistan, tremendous anger that political leaders like Trump and Biden made significant mistakes in how they withdrew U.S. forces. Many of these critiques, coming from Europeans as much as American elites, are in bad faith.
Nonetheless, rather than weighing in on the merits of these arguments, I think it’s better to look at how the establishment observed a stark portrait of Afghanistan before the withdrawal, to show that the current critiques have nothing to do with operational choices.
To that end, let’s look at a review of War Machine in Foreign Policy magazine, written by one of McChrystal’s aides, Whitney Kassel, who now works at private intelligence firm The Arkin Group. In this review, Kassel noted the movie made her so upset that she started cursing, because, while there were of course mistakes, the film was totally unfair to McChrystal and demeaned the entire mission of building a safe Afghanistan. Kassel, like most of these elites, didn’t get the joke, because she is the joke.
I see the discourse on the withdrawal as a super-sized version of this Kassel’s review. The ‘Blob,’ that loose network of diplomats, ex-diplomats, generals, lobbyists, defense contractors, fancy lawyers, famous journalists, and insiders see the obvious desire for withdrawal as similar to how Kassel saw the truth-telling of Hastings and the Netflix movie. They are angry and embarrassed that they can’t hide their failures anymore. Their entire sense of self was bound up in the idea of an illusion of an unbeatable all-powerful America, even when they, like General Glen “the Glanimal” McMahon were the only ones who believed it.
And their embarrassment covers up something even more dangerous. None of these tens of thousands of Ivy league encrusted PR savvy highly credentialed prestigious people actually know how to do anything useful. They can write books on leadership, or do powerpoints, or leak stories, but the hard logistics of actually using resources to achieve something important are foreign to them, masked by unlimited budgets and public relations. It is, as someone told me in 2019 about the consumer goods giant Proctor and Gamble, where “very few white-collar workers at P&G really did anything” except take credit for the work of others.
Defense Monopolies and the Afghan Army
It’s fun to act like it was always thus, that this is how empires behave. But in fact, that’s not true. The current Blob is relatively new. And believe it or not, Western forces used to be able to actually win wars.
Going back to the last significant victory, the allies won World War II in large part for two reasons. First, the Soviet Union sacrificed 27 million people defeating the Nazis, and second, the U.S. military, government, labor, and business leaders were exceptionally good at logistics. The U.S. military had at least a dozen suppliers for each major weapons system, as well as the ability to produce its own weaponry, the government had exceptional insight into the U.S. economy, and New Dealers had destroyed the power of the Andrew Mellon and J.P. Morgan style short-term oriented financiers and monopolists who had controlled the industrial sinews of the country.
Today, this short-termism has taken over everything, including the military, which is now dominated by McKinsey-ified glory hounds without wisdom and defense contractors with market power. And this leadership class hasn’t just eroded our strategic capacity, but the very ability to conduct operations. Two days ago, Afghan General Sami Sadat published a piece in the New York Times describing why his army fell apart so quickly. He went through several important political reasons, but there was an interesting subtext about the operational capacity of a military that is so dependent on contractors for sustainment and repairs. In particular, these lines stuck out.
Contractors maintained our bombers and our attack and transport aircraft throughout the war. By July, most of the 17,000 support contractors had left. A technical issue now meant that aircraft — a Black Hawk helicopter, a C-130 transport, a surveillance drone — would be grounded.
The contractors also took proprietary software and weapons systems with them. They physically removed our helicopter missile-defense system. Access to the software that we relied on to track our vehicles, weapons and personnel also disappeared.
It’s just remarkable that contractors removed software and weapons systems from the Afghan army as they left. Remember, U.S. generals constantly talked about the strength of the Afghan forces, but analysts knew that its air force – on which it depended – would fall apart without contractors. The generals probably hadn’t really thought about the logistical problems of what dependence on contracting means. It’s just stunning that NATO forces would be trying to stand up an independent Afghan army, even as NATO contractors disarmed that army due to contracting arrangements.
I suspect the problem isn’t simply related to Afghanistan, because these kinds of problems are not isolated to the Afghan army. Last month, I noted that American soldiers are constantly complaining that bad contracting terms prevent them from fixing and using their own equipment, just as Apple stops consumers from repairing or tinkering with their iPhones. In 2019, Marine Elle Ekman noted that these problems are pervasive in the U.S. military.
Besides the broken generator in South Korea, I remembered working at a maintenance unit in Okinawa, Japan, watching as engines were packed up and shipped back to contractors in the United States for repairs because “that’s what the contract says.” The process took months.
With every engine sent back, Marines lost the opportunity to practice the skills they might need one day on the battlefield, where contractor support is inordinately expensive, unreliable or nonexistent…
While a broken generator or tactical vehicle may seem like small issues, the implications are much larger when a combat ship or a fighter jet needs to be fixed. What happens when those systems break somewhere with limited communications or transportation? Will the Department of Defense get stuck in the mud because of a warranty?
No one is invading the U.S., so these problems aren’t immediately obvious to most of us. Yet, with the collapse of the Afghan army, now we see an example of what happens when a military is too dependent on contractors, and that support system is removed (which adversaries could do to the U.S. military if they pursue certain strategies.) It turns out that the cost of not being able to repair your own equipment is losing wars.
More fundamentally, the people who are in charge of the governing institutions in our society are simply divorced from the underlying logistics of what makes them work. Everything, from the Boeing 737 Max to the opioid epidemic to the waste inside most big corporations to war, has been McKinsey-ified. And it’s all covered up with moral outrage, partisanship and culture warring, public relations, and management wisdom bullshit.
I’ll finish on a note of optimism. This loss in Afghanistan, while hugely embarrassing, could serve as a wake-up call. After the loss in Vietnam, a group of military officers, led by John Boyd, one of the greatest American military strategists in U.S. history, created a military reform movement, to change the way the Pentagon developed and used weapons, and they made enormous progress in restructuring key parts of the defense establishment. (One of the members of Boyd’s “Fighter Mafia,” Pierre Sprey, the man responsible for the remarkable A-10 Warthog, just passed away.) Similarly, the British, after losing the American Revolution, radically reformed their corrupt and antiquated systems of governance. Losing wars is a great spur to reform. It means that we as a society get to look at ourselves honestly. We may choose not to act on what we see, but we do in fact have the opportunity. And that’s not nothing.
UPDATE: I’d like to apologize to Whitney Kessel. She is no longer at the Arkin Group. After a stint at Palantir, she ended up at Morgan Stanley, where she is now the Head of Cyber Event Management for North America, which is not at all a highly paid fake job full of make work.
Like a lot of monopolists, Broadridge has market power despite charging high prices for a commodity service because its customers aren’t spending their own money, they are spending Other People’s Money. Stock brokers are the ‘customers,’ but they get to charge funds and firms for the cost, and get a kickback from Broadridge in the process. It’s great to buy something with someone else’s money, there’s no reason to hold prices down. And if you get a share of what you spend, you have an incentive to drive prices higher. Who cares how much the stuff you’re buying costs? You’re spending Other People’s Money!
Other People’s Money, or why does getting your college transcript cost $9? : A BIG reader sent me a note on how expensive it is to get emailed a PDF of a transcript from a university. It costs more than $9 apiece. Why? It turns out a firm called Parchment runs this service for a lot of universities, and Parchment is a roll-up of similar firms by private equity of similar firms. This is another example of Other People’s Money – the universities are the ‘customers,’ but the people who pay are the alumni and other stakeholders that need transcripts. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are kickbacks here as well.
Instead of the “targeted program management support” promised in the contract, consultants often performed rudimentary services, such as taking notes during calls between states and the CDC, and then organizing that information in PowerPoint slides for presentations, agency officials said.
This violates my recommendation to Biden, which was to keep McKinsey away from government.
UK Competition Regulator to Break Up Facebook?Ars Technica: The Competition and Markets Authority in the UK is thinking of forcing Facebook to spin off its Giphy acquisition. That’s a break-up!
Covid is No Reason to Suppress Nurse Wages: It’s hard to hire nurses these days without offering more pay, so hospitals are doing what monopolists like to do. Price-fix! They are trying to get the government to help them collude against workers. “On behalf of hospitals in the state of Texas, having an organized, consistent approach that doesn’t pit hospitals against each other in looking for staffing is what we need,” said Marc Boom, chair of the Texas Hospital Association. In other words, hospital execs want to work together to make sure no nurses get to shop their labor skills around. That would be a straight-up antitrust violation, which is why they are trying to get government approval before doing it.
Thanks for reading. Send me tips on weird monopolies, stories I’ve missed, or comments by clicking on the title of this newsletter. And if you liked this issue of BIG, you can sign up here for more issues of BIG, a newsletter on how to restore fair commerce, innovation and democracy. If you really liked it, read my book, Goliath: The 100-Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy.
cheers,
Matt Stoller
P.S. Don’t worry, I didn’t forget about Sony’s anime monopoly.
Hey Matt,
Long time reader here, I wanted to bring your attention to a sorta niche monopoly matter. Sony just recently acquired anime streaming service Crunchyroll for 1.2 billion dollars, they also acquired Funimation, another popular U.S. anime distributor, a few years ago. Both Crunchyroll and Funimation are two of the largest, and most accessible, streaming sites for anime. By purchasing Crunchyroll, Sony is essentially building an anime monopoly, something even the DOJ was afraid of despite approving the merger. Anime has grown dramatically in popularity over the past decade or so and Sony has kept pace constantly building and/or acquiring various distribution channels in Japan and around the world. Sony argues the acquisition will help them compete against streaming giants Netflix and Amazon (which are also trying to crack into the anime market), but you can color me skeptical.
Sony has said they’ll consolidate the libraries into one service, but it remains to be seen what that’ll look like. However, both Funimation and Crunchyroll offer a ton of free content, and my hunch is that it was because both services were competing against each other. However, if Sony is going head-to-head with Netflix and Amazon I imagine they’ll cut back the free content and bring prices more in line with those services. Furthermore, with distribution becoming more consolidated, it’ll likely put translators, animators, and studios in a worse bargaining position, which is saying a lot since many of them barely earnenough to survive.
I’ll admit, I’m not an industry insider, I’m just a guy who likes anime and hates monopolies, but I figured the news around the acquisition would catch your attention. If you want to explore this further I’d highly recommend connecting with some folks over at Anime News Network, which has been following the industry since the late 90s.
“Under Byrd’s interpretation, hundreds of rioters could have been gunned down on Jan. 6.”
Numerous aspects of what unfolded during the Capitol riot have been hotly debated in the months since it happened, but few have been as contentious and emotional as the debate over the officer-involved shooting death of Trump supporter Ashli Babbitt.
The 35-year-old Air Force veteran was shot and killed by Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd on January 6th after she tried to climb through a glass-paneled door after parts of it had been shattered by another rioter, identified as Zachary Jordan Alam.
Babbitt, who reportedly had been standing next to Alam, was shot.
“Under Byrd’s interpretation, hundreds of rioters could have been gunned down on Jan. 6.”Posted by Stacey Matthews Sunday, August 29, 2021 at 06:30pm 64 Comments
Numerous aspects of what unfolded during the Capitol riot have been hotly debated in the months since it happened, but few have been as contentious and emotional as the debate over the officer-involved shooting death of Trump supporter Ashli Babbitt.
The 35-year-old Air Force veteran was shot and killed by Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd on January 6th after she tried to climb through a glass-paneled door after parts of it had been shattered by another rioter, identified as Zachary Jordan Alam.
Babbitt, who reportedly had been standing next to Alam, was shot.
In April, the Biden Department of Justice announced they had closed the investigation into the fatal shooting and would not be pursuing criminal charges against Byrd, citing “insufficient evidence to support a criminal prosecution.”
Just last week, the Capitol Police confirmed a report from NBC News that they had exonerated Byrd, a 28-year veteran of the force. They stated in a press release that Byrd – who they did not name – “will not be facing internal discipline” because in their view Byrd’s conduct “was lawful and within Department policy, which says an officer may use deadly force only when the officer reasonably believes that action is in the defense of human life, including the officer’s own life, or in the defense of any person in immediate danger of serious physical injury.”
On the heels of the USCP exonerating Byrd, he did an interview with NBC News anchor Lester Holt, identifying himself publicly for the first time.
Instead of clearing things up, the interview only intensified the debate over his actions and whether they were justified. Here’s a key moment from their back and forth:
Video shot by a person in the crowd showed two officers posted in front of the door. Heavily outnumbered, they eventually stepped aside.
Byrd said he had no knowledge that any officers were there. Because of the furniture stacked on his side of the door, he also couldn’t make out how many people were on the other side or whether they were carrying weapons.
“It was impossible for me to see what was on the other side,” he said.
But he did see the person now known to be Babbitt start coming through the broken glass.
“I could not fully see her hands or what was in the backpack or what the intentions are,” Byrd said. “But they had shown violence leading up to that point.”
Byrd, who says he has been in hiding since that day and has faced death threats, told Holt it was the first time he’d ever fired his weapon.
Watch an edited version of the interview below:
In an exclusive interview with @LesterHoltNBC, Capitol Police Lieutenant Michael Byrd describes why he’s choosing to identify himself. Byrd shares his account of the January 6 riot, as officers barricaded the door and he fired a single shot, killing Ashli Babbitt. pic.twitter.com/5E7KPtxNc2
— NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt (@NBCNightlyNews) August 26, 2021
“Under Byrd’s interpretation, hundreds of rioters could have been gunned down on Jan. 6.”Posted by Stacey Matthews Sunday, August 29, 2021 at 06:30pm 64 Comments
Numerous aspects of what unfolded during the Capitol riot have been hotly debated in the months since it happened, but few have been as contentious and emotional as the debate over the officer-involved shooting death of Trump supporter Ashli Babbitt.
The 35-year-old Air Force veteran was shot and killed by Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd on January 6th after she tried to climb through a glass-paneled door after parts of it had been shattered by another rioter, identified as Zachary Jordan Alam.
Babbitt, who reportedly had been standing next to Alam, was shot.
In April, the Biden Department of Justice announced they had closed the investigation into the fatal shooting and would not be pursuing criminal charges against Byrd, citing “insufficient evidence to support a criminal prosecution.”
Just last week, the Capitol Police confirmed a report from NBC News that they had exonerated Byrd, a 28-year veteran of the force. They stated in a press release that Byrd – who they did not name – “will not be facing internal discipline” because in their view Byrd’s conduct “was lawful and within Department policy, which says an officer may use deadly force only when the officer reasonably believes that action is in the defense of human life, including the officer’s own life, or in the defense of any person in immediate danger of serious physical injury.”
On the heels of the USCP exonerating Byrd, he did an interview with NBC News anchor Lester Holt, identifying himself publicly for the first time.
Instead of clearing things up, the interview only intensified the debate over his actions and whether they were justified. Here’s a key moment from their back and forth:
Video shot by a person in the crowd showed two officers posted in front of the door. Heavily outnumbered, they eventually stepped aside.
Byrd said he had no knowledge that any officers were there. Because of the furniture stacked on his side of the door, he also couldn’t make out how many people were on the other side or whether they were carrying weapons.
“It was impossible for me to see what was on the other side,” he said.
But he did see the person now known to be Babbitt start coming through the broken glass.
“I could not fully see her hands or what was in the backpack or what the intentions are,” Byrd said. “But they had shown violence leading up to that point.”
Byrd, who says he has been in hiding since that day and has faced death threats, told Holt it was the first time he’d ever fired his weapon.
Watch an edited version of the interview:
In an exclusive interview with @LesterHoltNBC, Capitol Police Lieutenant Michael Byrd describes why he’s choosing to identify himself. Byrd shares his account of the January 6 riot, as officers barricaded the door and he fired a single shot, killing Ashli Babbitt. pic.twitter.com/5E7KPtxNc2
— NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt (@NBCNightlyNews) August 26, 2021
Georgetown University Law School Professor Jonathan Turley, who has long been a critic of official media narratives surrounding the shooting, said that instead of confirming that the respective decisions by the DOJ and the Capitol Police not to pursue action against Byrd were the right ones to make that Byrd “proceeded to demolish the two official reviews that cleared him” after he admitted he could not determine whether Babbitt was armed:
I have long expressed doubt over the Babbitt shooting, which directly contradicted standards on the use of lethal force by law enforcement. But what was breathtaking about Byrd’s interview was that he confirmed the worst suspicions about the shooting …https://t.co/66xjvIK0hh
…Of all of the lines from Byrd, this one stands out: “I could not fully see her hands or what was in the backpack or what the intentions are.” So, Byrd admitted he did not see a weapon or an immediate threat from Babbitt beyond her trying to enter through the window…
…No other officers facing similar threats shot anyone in any other part of the Capitol, even those who were attacked by rioters armed with clubs or other objects. Under Byrd's interpretation, hundreds of rioters could have been gunned down on Jan. 6.
He expanded on his opinion in a piece published at The Hill:
While the Supreme Court, in cases such as Graham v. Connor, has said that courts must consider “the facts and circumstances of each particular case,” it has emphasized that lethal force must be used only against someone who is “an immediate threat to the safety of the officers or others, and … is actively resisting arrest or attempting to evade arrest by flight.” Particularly with armed assailants, the standard governing “imminent harm” recognizes that these decisions must often be made in the most chaotic and brief encounters.
Under these standards, police officers should not shoot unarmed suspects or rioters without a clear threat to themselves or fellow officers.
[…]
Legal experts and the media have avoided the obvious implications of the two reviews in the Babbitt shooting. Under this standard, hundreds of rioters could have been gunned down on Jan. 6 — and officers in cities such as Seattle or Portland, Ore., could have killed hundreds of violent protesters who tried to burn courthouses, took over city halls or occupied police stations during last summer’s widespread rioting. In all of those protests, a small number of activists from both political extremes showed up prepared for violence and pushed others to riot. According to the DOJ’s Byrd review, officers in those cities would not have been required to see a weapon in order to use lethal force in defending buildings.
I’m not a legal analyst, but I think Turley makes some good points here.
Say her name: Ashli Babbitt
Here’s Turley
Here is my column in The Hill on the recent interview of Lt. Michael Byrd who was the hitherto unnamed Capitol Hill officer who shot Ashli Babbitt on January 6th.
The interview was notable in an admission that Byrd made about what he actually saw… and what he did not see.
Here is the column:
“That’s my job.” Those three words summed up a controversial interview this week with the long-unnamed officer who shot and killed Ashli Babbitt on Jan. 6. Shortly after being cleared by the Capitol Police in the shooting, Lt. Michael Byrd went public in an NBC interview, insisting that he “saved countless lives” by shooting the unarmed protester.
I have long expressed doubt over the Babbitt shooting, which directly contradicted standards on the use of lethal force by law enforcement. But what was breathtaking about Byrd’s interview was that he confirmed the worst suspicions about the shooting and raised serious questions over the incident reviews by the Department of Justice (DOJ) and, most recently, the Capitol Police.
Babbitt, 35, was an Air Force veteran and ardent supporter of former President Trump. She came to Washington to protest the certification of the presidential Electoral College results and stormed into the Capitol when security lines collapsed. She had no criminal record but clearly engaged in criminal conduct that day by entering Capitol and disobeying police commands. The question, however, has been why this unarmed trespasser deserved to die.
When protesters rushed to the House chamber, police barricaded the chamber’s doors; Capitol Police were on both sides, with officers standing directly behind Babbitt. Babbitt and others began to force their way through, and Babbitt started to climb through a broken window. That is when Byrd killed her.
At the time, some of us familiar with the rules governing police use of force raised concerns over the shooting. Those concerns were heightened by the DOJ’s bizarre review and report, which stated the governing standards but then seemed to brush them aside to clear Byrd.
The DOJ report did not read like any post-shooting review I have read as a criminal defense attorney or law professor. The DOJ statement notably does not say that the shooting was clearly justified. Instead, it stressed that “prosecutors would have to prove not only that the officer used force that was constitutionally unreasonable, but that the officer did so ‘willfully.’” It seemed simply to shrug and say that the DOJ did not believe it could prove “a bad purpose to disregard the law” and that “evidence that an officer acted out of fear, mistake, panic, misperception, negligence, or even poor judgment cannot establish the high level of intent.”
While the Supreme Court, in cases such as Graham v. Connor, has said that courts must consider “the facts and circumstances of each particular case,” it has emphasized that lethal force must be used only against someone who is “an immediate threat to the safety of the officers or others, and … is actively resisting arrest or attempting to evade arrest by flight.” Particularly with armed assailants, the standard governing “imminent harm” recognizes that these decisions must often be made in the most chaotic and brief encounters.
Under these standards, police officers should not shoot unarmed suspects or rioters without a clear threat to themselves or fellow officers. That even applies to armed suspects who fail to obey orders. Indeed, Huntsville police officer William “Ben” Darby recently was convicted for killing a suicidal man holding a gun to his own head. Despite being cleared by a police review board, Darby was prosecuted, found guilty and sentenced to 25 years in prison, even though Darby said he feared for the safety of himself and fellow officers. Yet law professors and experts who have praised such prosecutions in the past have been conspicuously silent over the shooting of an unarmed woman who had officers in front of and behind her on Jan. 6.
Byrd went public soon after the Capitol Police declared “no further action will be taken” in the case. He proceeded to demolish the two official reviews that cleared him.
Byrd described how he was “trapped” with other officers as “the chants got louder” with what “sounded like hundreds of people outside of that door.” He said he yelled for all of the protesters to stop: “I tried to wait as long as I could. I hoped and prayed no one tried to enter through those doors. But their failure to comply required me to take the appropriate action to save the lives of members of Congress and myself and my fellow officers.”
Byrd could just as well have hit the officers behind Babbitt, who was shot while struggling to squeeze through the window.
Of all of the lines from Byrd, this one stands out:
“I could not fully see her hands or what was in the backpack or what the intentions are.”
So, Byrd admitted he did not see a weapon or an immediate threat from Babbitt beyond her trying to enter through the window.
Nevertheless, Byrd boasted, “I know that day I saved countless lives.”
No other officers facing similar threats shot anyone in any other part of the Capitol, even those who were attacked by rioters armed with clubs or other objects.
Legal experts and the media have avoided the obvious implications of the two reviewsin the Babbitt shooting.
Under this standard, hundreds of rioters could have been gunned down on Jan. 6 — and officers in cities such as Seattle or Portland, Ore., could have killed hundreds of violent protesters who tried to burn courthouses, took over city halls or occupied police stations during last summer’s widespread rioting. In all of those protests, a small number of activists from both political extremes showed up prepared for violence and pushed others to riot. According to the DOJ’s Byrd review, officers in those cities would not have been required to see a weapon in order to use lethal force in defending buildings.
Politico reported that Byrd previously was subjected to a disciplinary review when he left his Glock 22 service weapon in a bathroom in the Capitol Visitor Center complex. He reportedly told other officers that his rank as a lieutenant and his role as commander of the House chambers section would protect him and that he expected to “be treated differently.”
In the Babbitt shooting, the different treatment seems driven more by the identity of the person shot than the shooter. Babbitt is considered by many to be fair game because she was labeled an “insurrectionist.” To describe her shooting as unjustified would be to invite accusations of supporting sedition or insurrection. Thus, it is not enough to condemn her actions (as most of us have done); you must not question her killing.
Like many, I condemned the Jan. 6 riot (along with those who fueled the unhinged anger that led to the violence) as the desecration of our Capitol and our constitutional process. But that doesn’t mean rioting should be treated as a license for the use oflethal force, particularly against unarmed suspects. The “job” of officers, to which Byrd referred, often demands a courage and restraint that few of us could muster. As shown by every other officer that day, it is a job that is often defined by abstinence from rather than application of lethal force. It was the rest of the force who refrained from using lethal force, despite being attacked, that were the extraordinary embodiments of the principles governing their profession.
Samples from early Wuhan COVID-19 patients show the presence of genetically modified Henipah virus, an American scientist has found.
Henipah was one of the two types of viruses sent to China by Chinese-born scientists from a Canadian laboratory at the centre of a controversy over the firing of the scientists and collaboration with Chinese military researchers. It is not clear whether the virus found in the Chinese samples is related to the virus samples sent by the Canadian lab, which were shipped in late March 2019.
The finding was confirmed for The Epoch Times by another qualified scientist.
The evidence was first found by Dr. Steven Quay, a Seattle-based physician-scientist and former faculty member at the Stanford University School of Medicine, who looked at early COVID-19 samples uploaded by scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) shortly after China informed the World Health Organization about the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak.
Chinese virologist Shi Zhengli is seen inside the P4 laboratory in Wuhan, China, on Feb. 23, 2017. (Johannes Eisele/AFP via Getty Images)
The samples from the patients, who reportedly were found to have the “unknown pneumonia” in December 2019, were uploaded to the genetic sequence database, GenBank, on the website of the U.S. National Institute of Health (NIH).
Quay says that while other scientists around the world were mostly interested in examining the genome of SARS-CoV-2 in the samples uploaded by the WIV scientists, he wanted to see what else was in the samples collected from the patients.
So he collaborated with a few other scientists to analyze sequences from the samples.
“We started fishing inside for weird things,” Quay told The Epoch Times.
What they found, he says, are the results of what could likely be contamination from different experiments in the lab making their way into the samples, as well as evidence of Henipah virus.
“We found genetic manipulation of the Nipah virus, which is more lethal than Ebola.” Nipah is a type of Henipah virus.
The Epoch Times asked Joe Wang, PhD, who formerly spearheaded a vaccine development program for SARS in Canada with one of the world’s leading pharmaceutical companies, to verify the finding. Wang is currently the president of NTD Television Canada, the sister company of The Epoch Times in Canada.
After examining the evidence, Wang said he was able to replicate Quay’s findings on the Henipah virus. He explains that the genetic manipulation of the virus was likely for the purposes of vaccine development.
Documents released by the Canadian government state WIV’s intended use of the virus samples sent by Canada as “stock virus culturing,” which in simpler terms means storage of the viruses while keeping them alive. Genetic manipulation would not be within the scope of this description.
Winnipeg Lab
The firing of Chinese-born scientist Xiangguo Qiu and her husband, Keding Cheng, from the National Microbiology laboratory (NML) in Winnipeg has been the subject of much controversy in Canada, with opposition parties pressing the government for more details on the case, and the government refusing to release information citing national security and privacy concerns.
Qiu and Cheng along with several Chinese students were escorted out of NML, Canada’s only Level 4 lab, in July 2019, amid a police investigation. The two scientists were formally fired in January 2021.
The Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC), which is in charge of NML, said the termination was the result of an “administrative matter” and “possible breaches of security protocols,” but has declined to provide further details, citing security and privacy concerns.
House Speaker Anthony Rota admonishes Public Health Agency of Canada President Iain Stewart in the House of Commons on June 21, 2021, for failing to provide documents related to the firing of two scientists from the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg. (The Canadian Press/Sean Kilpatrick)
During her time at NML, Qiu travelled several times in an official capacity to WIV, helping train personnel on Level 4 safety. The Globe and Mail later reported that scientists at NML have been collaborating with Chinese military researchers on deadly pathogens, and that one of the Chinese military researchers worked at the high-security Winnipeg lab for a period of time.
Documents and emails released by PHAC show that the shipment of Henipah and Ebola samples was done with the permission of NML authorities.
In one of the emails sent in September 2018, David Safronetz, chief of special pathogens at PHAC, informs then-head of NML Matthew Gilmour and other lab administrators about the request from WIV for the shipment of the samples, saying “I trust the lab.”
In response, Gilmour asks about the nature of the work that will be done at the Wuhan lab, and why the lab doesn’t get the material from “other, more local labs.” He also tells Safronetz that it’s “good to know that you trust this group,” asking how NML was connected with them.
In his reply, Safronetz doesn’t specifically say what the samples will be used for in China, but notes they will only be sent once all paperwork and certification is completed. He also says the WIV is requesting the material from NML “due to collaboration” with Qiu.
He adds, “Historically, it’s also been easier to obtain material from us as opposed to US labs. I don’t think other, closer labs have the ability to ship these materials.”
Gilmour resigned from his position at NML in May 2020 and joined a UK-based bioresearch company.
MPs have asked NML management why shipment of the samples was allowed and whether they knew if China performs any Gain of Function (GoF) research at WIV. GoF research involves increasing the lethal level (virulence) or transmissibility of pathogens.
NML’s acting scientific director general Guillaume Poliquin told MPs during a parliamentary committee meeting on March 22 that the lab only sent the samples to WIV after receiving assurance that no GoF research would take place.
Conservative MP John Williamson pressed for more answers, saying the word of the state-run Chinese lab can’t be trusted as the Chinese regime “has a history of theft and lies.”
The issue of GoF research at WIV has been a point of contention in the United States between lawmakers and Dr. Anthony Fauci, NIH’s head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, whose organization has funded research (through EcoHealth Alliance) on coronaviruses at the Wuhan lab. U.S. Sen. Rand Paul says published work from WIV on coronaviruses shows the lab is conducting GoF research, a charge Fauci denies.
The P4 laboratory on the campus of the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, China, on May 13, 2020. (Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images)
The Epoch Times sought comment from PHAC, including as to how the agency addressed issues of intellectual property and the development of any products such as vaccines with WIV, but didn’t hear back by time of publication.
Despite repeated requests by opposition parties for more details related to the firing of the two NML scientists, the Liberal government has refused to provide records, saying there are national security and privacy concerns.
After the House of Commons issued an order for the government to disclose the information, the government took the Speaker of the House to court to obtain confirmation from a judge that it can withhold the documents. The government later dropped its court case once Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called an election and Parliament was dissolved.
The U.S. provided an estimated $83 billion worth of training and equipment to Afghan security forces since 2001. This year, alone, the U.S. military aid to Afghan forces was $3 billion.
Putting price tags on American military equipment still in Afghanistan isn’t an easy task. In the fog of war – or withdrawal – Afghanistan has always been a black box with little sunshine.
Not helping transparency, the Biden Administration is now hiding key audits on Afghan military equipment. This week, our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com reposted two key reports on the U.S. war chest of military gear in Afghanistan that had disappeared from federal websites.
U.S. taxpayers paid for these audits and the U.S.-provided equipment and should be able to follow the money.
Furthermore, unless noted, when estimating “acquisition value,” our source is the Department Logistics Agency (DLA) and their comprehensive databases of military equipment.
First, this public service announcement: There is no voter fraud in U.S. elections. Thank you for your attention.
A California man was discovered asleep in his car in the parking lot of a 7-Eleven store in Torrance with drugs, cash, and several drivers’ licenses, according to ABC7
Oh… I nearly forgot. There were about 300 unopened recall election ballots in the car.
Taken together, it’s an interesting picture, don’t you think?
Having 300 ballots in your possession is suspicious. Having the ballots AND several drivers’ licenses clearly establishes intent to commit voter fraud.
“Last night, officers responded to a male subject passed out in a vehicle in the 7-11 parking lot,” the Torrance Police Department wrote on Facebook. “Officers learned he was a felon & located Xanax pills on him. Officers continued their investigation and discovered a loaded firearm, methamphetamine, thousands of pieces of mail, a scale & multiple CA drivers licenses and credit cards in other individuals’ names.”
The suspect was arrested on numerous weapons, narcotics, and forgery charges.
The Los Angeles County registrar deadpanned, “There’s nothing to indicate this was focused on the election.” Cue the laugh track.
The registrar has been busy of late. Last week, some LA residents complained there were holes in their mailed ballot envelopes.
“This has been part of the envelope design for years. The holes serve both an accessibility purpose and a quality assurance purpose after the fact to validate no voted ballots are left unprocessed; an established, recommended practice,” the registrar’s office said on Twitter.
This has been part of the envelope design for years. The holes serve both an accessibility purpose and a quality assurance purpose after the fact to validate no voted ballots are left unprocessed; an established, recommended practice.
— Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk (@LACountyRRCC) August 20, 2021
Former acting director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell was also concerned about the suspicious holes.
How vigorously will this case be pursued? Three hundred ballots is admittedly not a lot in an election where millions of votes will be cast, but perhaps an investigation would supply some answers, or more likely, lead to more questions.
These were mailed ballots. How could anyone, much less a convicted felon, found with several drivers’ licenses, get his hands on so many of them?
Who was he going to sell the ballots to? Unless you believe he was selflessly motivated, the felon had to have had a buyer in mind when he stole them. Who was it?
Are there any others involved or was he acting alone?
It would be interesting to follow the progress of this investigation, but you and I both know it’s already disappeared down the rabbit hole, never to see the light of day. Anyone in the future who might raise questions about this will be branded a “right-wing conspiracy-monger” and summarily dismissed.
Because everyone knows there is no fraud in American elections.
10 Secret Files Exposing The True Nature Of Afghan War
August 23, 2021
WikiLeaks has been republishing a few of its more interesting leaks related to the past Afghan war logs, a vast drove of classified US documents which first hit public view over a decade ago. Below are 10 secret files exposing the true nature of the Afghan war.
In 2011, Julian Assange explained what’s behind America’s longest ever war: “The goal is to use Afghanistan to wash money out of the tax bases of the US and Europe through Afghanistan and back into the hands of a transnational security elite. The goal is an endless war, not a successful war,” Assange said in the old interview footage.
Julian Assange speaking in 2011: "The goal is to use Afghanistan to wash money out of the tax bases of the US and Europe through Afghanistan and back into the hands of a transnational security elite. The goal is an endless war, not a successful war" #Afghanistanpic.twitter.com/Hg3qVzABBg
The Nato coalition in Afghanistan had been using an undisclosed “black” unit of special forces, Task Force 373, to hunt down targets for death or detention without trial.
Details of more than 2,000 senior figures from the Taliban and al-Qaida were held on a “kill or capture” list, known as Jpel, the joint prioritised effects list.
In many cases, the unit set out to seize a target for internment, but in others it simply killed them without attempting to capture. The logs reveal that TF 373 also killed civilian men, women and children and even Afghan police officers who strayed into its path.
Feminism For Targeted Manipulation Of Public Opinion
The CIA attempted to blunt criticism of the US ‘endless’ occupation by creating propaganda that emphasized feminism for “targeted manipulation of public opinion”.
After the Dutch government fell on the issue of Dutch troops in Afghanistan, the CIA became worried that similar events could happen in the countries that post the third and fourth largest troop contingents to the ISAF mission.
The proposed PR strategies focused on pressure points that have been identified within these countries.
For France it was the sympathy of the public for Afghan refugees and women. For Germany it was the fear of the consequences of defeat (drugs, more refugees, terrorism) as well as for Germany’s standing in NATO.
The memo was a recipe for the targeted manipulation of public opinion in two NATO ally countries, written by the CIA. It is classified as Confidential/No Foreign Nationals.
Osama Bin Laden And CIA Cooperation
Complex underground fortresses were built in the 1980’s with Osama bin Laden and CIA cooperation.
Tora Bora was known to be a stronghold location of the Taliban, used by military forces against the Soviet Union during the 1980s.
Tora Bora and the surrounding Safed Koh range had natural caverns formed by streams eating into the limestone that had later been expanded into a CIA-financed complex built for the Mujahideen.
NSA Swept Up Entire Country’s Communications
NSA rolled out unprecedented mass surveillance in Afghanistan in 2013, recording and storing nearly all domestic and international phone calls, WikiLeaks revealed.
“We know from previous reporting that the National Security Agency’s mass interception system is a key component in the United States’ drone targeting program.
The US drone targeting program has killed thousands of people and hundreds of women and children in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia in violation of international law. The censorship of a victim state’s identity directly assists the killing of innocent people.”
“Although, for reasons of source protection we cannot disclose how, WikiLeaks has confirmed that the identity of victim state is Afghanistan.”about:blankLearn more
Bombing Raids To Promote New Fighter Jets
Sweden wanted to utilize bombing raids over Afghanistan to better market and promote a new fighter jet.
“Sweden has other potential assets for Afghanistan: — Newly acquired HKP 10 Super Puma Medevac Helicopter that could possibly be deployed in Afghanistan after June 30, when the NBG completes its commitment. — JAS Gripen fighters.
Sweden’s Armed Forces has publicly suggested sending JAS Gripen fighter aircraft to Afghanistan. The Swedish military lobbied for the deployment, arguing that possible combat experience would be good for the Air Force — and enhance the marketability of the Gripen.”
Afghan Vice-President Landed In Dubai With $52m In Cash
WikiLeaks Cable details how in one incident the then vice-president of Afghanistan Ahmad Zia Massoud was stopped and questioned in Dubai when he flew into the emirate with $52m in cash.
Rampant government corruption in Afghanistan – and the apparent powerlessness of the US do to anything about it – is laid bare by several classified diplomatic cables implicating members of the country’s elite.
In one astonishing incident in October 2009 the then vice-president, Ahmad Zia Massoud, was stopped and questioned in Dubai when he flew into the emirate with $52m in cash, according to one diplomatic report.
Massoud, the younger brother of the legendary anti-Soviet resistance leader Ahmad Shah Massoud, was detained by officials from the US and the United Arab Emirates trying to stop money laundering, it says.
End Date Narrative
NATO command consistently told over the years not to discuss an end date to the war.
According to NATO Master Narrative for Afghanistan leaked by WikiLeaks:
“There is no pre-defined end date for the mission, only an end state: Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) able to provide security and sustain stability in Afghanistan without NATO/ISAF support.”
Operation Medusa – Large Scale Massacre Of Civilians
Afghanistan war logs exposed large-scale massacres of civilians by US and coalition bombers.
In a 2015 interview, Julian Assange detailed the 181 kill AC-130 ‘Medusa Massacre’ in Kandahar.
“There were 90,000 records in the Afghan War Logs,” Assange said. “We had to look at different angles in the material to add up the number of civilians who have been killed. We studied the records. We ranked events different ways.
I wondered if we could find out the largest number of civilians killed in a single event. It turned out that this occurred during Operation Medusa, led by Canadian forces in September 2006.
The US-backed local government was quite corrupt. The Taliban was, in effect, the political opposition and had a lot of support. The locals rose up against the government. Most of the young men in the area, from a political perspective, were Taliban.
There was a government crackdown that encountered strong resistance. ISAF [the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force] carried out a big sweep. It went house to house. Then an American soldier was killed.
They called in an AC-130 gunship. This is a C-130 cargo plane refitted with cannons on the side. It circled overhead and rained down shells. The War Logs say 181 ‘enemy’ were killed. The logs also say there were no wounded or captured.
It was a significant massacre. This event, the day when the largest number of people were killed in Afghanistan, has never been properly investigated by the old media.”
Afghan National Police Were Predatory And Corrupt
US intelligence has long understood that Afghan national police were “predatory and corrupt”.
According to the EXECUTIVE SUMMARY OF KEY FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS ON AFGHANISTAN AND PAKISTAN:
“Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) end state is inadequate to secure stability. The ANA has only 67,000 troops with a current target of 80,000 (due to increase to 122,000). The ANP is severely underfunded, undertrained, and poorly equipped.
Additionally, the Afghan populace views the police as predatory and corrupt vice a source of protection.
“The [Afghan National Police] is severely underfunded, undertrained, and poorly equipped. Additionally, the Afghan populace views the police as predatory and corrupt”, USG’s 2008 Findings and Recommendations on #Afghanistan and Pakistanhttps://t.co/NZm2eEyOucpic.twitter.com/3pS3ULbqNd
Your boy Dementia Joe owns it all now — the catastrophe in Kabul, open borders, rampant inflation, skyrocketing urban crime, the destruction of American energy independence, endless nonsensical lockdowns over a mild virus that is killing almost no one, not to mention so many public misstatements by the doddering old clown that his own cabinet secretaries have to correct his insane lies even before he shuffles off to Marine One for the flight back to his weekend assisted-living facility in Delaware.
But no more mean tweets, right? And that’s all that matters, isn’t it?
Orange Man Bad used to ask, “Are you tired of winning yet?”
Dementia Joe, if he could still speak in coherent sentences, might sputter, “Are you tired of losing yet?”
After he was installed as president, Dementia Joe’s caregivers said of their Deep State foreign policy: America is Back. Surely they meant to say, “America is on its Back.”
Or maybe, America is Back on its Back, because this is a greater calamity than Barack Obama leading from behind — way behind. This is Jimmy Carter’s presidency on steroids, only worse, because at least Carter was trying, however ineptly, to do the right thing.
Dementia Joe, not so much.
Thanks, Joe Biden voters, for not being able to realize what Osama bin Laden did back in 2010, in a letter that was found in his personal effects after he was killed by the U.S. military (a raid Dementia Joe naturally opposed, because it was so obviously the right thing to do.)
Speculating about the prospect of a President Biden, bin Laden wrote:
“Biden is totally unprepared for that post, which will lead the US into a crisis.”
A terrorist knew it, 74 million Trump supporters knew it, but all those Biden voters (however many there actually were) apparently had no clue.
Or perhaps all of you Biden bumkissers were just bedazzled by his flowery oratory, his proposals for an American Rescue “Pan,” the centerpiece of his dream to “Build Back Pletter.” Biden voters, you believed every preposterous canard the alt-left media spoon-fed you — the Russian collusion hoax, the Ukrainian phone call, the Russian bounties on U.S. troops, Trump allegedly saying the military dead were “losers,” that Hunter Biden’s laptop was “Russian disinformation,” that Jan. 6 was an “insurrection” and that a Capitol Police officer was murdered etc., etc.
But you didn’t care, did you, Biden voters? All you cared about was free stuff, handouts without end, because, you know, the virus.
Biden supporters are by definition low-information voters, because if they were paying attention, they’d be as concerned about the rapid unraveling of this society as those of us who work for a living and are not on the dole — i.e., aren’t Democrats.
Of course Biden’s cheerleaders in the media are handling the non-working classes the same way farmers do mushrooms — keeping them in the dark and feeding them excrement.
Last week, Dementia Joe sat down for a kid-gloves interview with Democrat operative George Stephanopoulos. The video was damning enough — Biden came across like a cross between Grandpa Simpson and Norm Crosby. But the transcript was even more damning.
This is what ABC “News” left on the cutting-room floor, and refuses to release the video of.
Steffie quotes an Army vet saying, “I just wish we could’ve left with honor.”
To which Joe responded, according to the official ABC transcript:
“Look, that’s like askin’ my deceased son Beau, who spent six months in Kosovo and a year in Iraq as a Navy captain and then major — I mean, as an Army major. And you know, I’m sure h-he had regrets comin’ out of Afghanista — I mean, out of Iraq.”
So he forgot the branch of the military service his beloved son Beau served in, his rank and the foreign country in which he was stationed. And this in a slobbering interview with an obsequious Democrat partisan.
Friday it was more of the same. Only “reporters” from the fakest of Fake News outlets — PBS, NPR, ABC “News” — were afforded an opportunity to fawn and pose him questions on bended knee.
And yet Dementia Joe still didn’t know his rear end from a hole in the ground.
On one issue after another — foreign opprobrium over our abject surrender, American citizens’ access to the Kabul airport, the presence of al-Qaeda — Biden either didn’t know what he was talking about, or he was lying, or both.
When Tucker Carlson nightly plays this video of a hopelessly addled old fool on Fox News, he always mentions at the end how sorry he feels for this feeble, ruined, corrupt shell of a human being.
I don’t feel sorry for Biden at all. I feel sorry for me — and for you, and for all of us who understood before his selection just how demented he was, and is.
Osama bin Laden BANNED al Qaeda from trying to assassinate Joe Biden because he believed he would be an incompetent president and ‘lead the US into a crisis’
Joe Biden has been widely condemned for pulling US troops out of Afghanistan
Ongoing chaos in Kabul has led critics to accuse him of ‘humiliating’ the US
Osama bin Laden, the man America went to Afghanistan to kill, warned in 2010 that a Biden presidency was likely to ‘lead the US into a crisis’
Bin Laden banned al Qaeda from killing Biden, hoping he would become leader
Osama bin Laden banned al Qaeda from assassinating Joe Biden because the Democrat would become an incompetent president and ‘lead the US into a crisis’ if jihadists were successful in killing Barack Obama.
Bin Laden made the remark in a 2010 letter that was found in a trove of documents at the Pakistan compound where he was killed by US special forces in 2011.
The document was first made public in 2012 but has been brought back to light and given new significance amid the chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan that has gifted the country back to the Taliban.
+4
Osama bin Laden banned al Qaeda from killing Joe Biden because he wanted the Democrat to become president – believing he was ‘unprepared’ and would ‘lead the US into a crisis’
+4
Joe Biden has been widely condemned for his withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan which has gifted control of the country back to the Taliban
Is this man fit for office? Doctors say they would be concerned about ‘anyone’ with Joe Biden’s symptoms at age 78 after two brain aneurysms and a heart condition – which are BOTH linked to memory problems
Questions have been raised about US President Joe Biden’s cognitive wellbeing after a car crash interview over his handling of the unfolding Afghanistan crisis.
America’s oldest president provided jumbled responses to questions and mixed up details about his son in an interview with ABC.
The stumbles did not make the broadcasted version but were revealed when a full transcript of the interview was published overnight.
It revealed the President incorrectly stated his late son Beau Biden worked for the Navy in Afghanistan, before correcting himself that he served for the Army in Iraq.
It follows a spate of gaffes and slips of the tongue since the 78-year-old ran his successful presidential campaign in 2019.
Mr Biden has previously suffered two brain aneurysms and a heart condition which makes the muscle beat too fast, causing dizziness and confusion.
A top cardiologist told MailOnline today that both conditions are linked to memory difficulties and confusion, as well as dementia.
Dr Aseem Malhotra, an NHS consultant and expert in evidence-based medicine, said: ‘Certainly there’s a link [between the conditions and cognitive decline].
‘But just as a doctor observing him, given his medical history and age, I’m worried about early onset dementia.
‘I would be worried about anyone exhibiting issues with recall and memory at Joe Biden’s age.’
And Dr Amit Bajaj, an associate professor in speech science Emerson University in Boston Massachusetts, agreed that the reasons behind Mr Biden’s increasing number of gaffes might be ‘because he is old’.
Bin Laden – then-leader of al Qaeda, and the man that America went to Afghanistan to kill – penned the 48-page missive in May 2010 to an aide identified as ‘Brother Shaykh Mahmud’, real name Atiyah Abd al-Rahman.
In it, he discusses the need to direct resources away from terror attacks in other Muslim countries and instead focus on direct attacks against the US.
On page 36, he outlines his desire to form two hit squads – one in Pakistan and another in Afghanistan – whose job it will be to plot attacks against then-US President Barack Obama and ex-CIA director David Petraeus, should they visit either country.
Giving his reasoning for attacking Obama, he says: ‘Obama is the head of infidelity and killing him automatically will make Biden take over the presidency for the remainder of the term, as it is the norm over there.
‘Biden is totally unprepared for that post, which will lead the US into a crisis.’
He the adds: ‘As for Petraeus, he is the man of the hour in this last year of the war, and killing him would alter the war’s path.’
US intelligence analysts who first revealed the existence of the document to the Washington Post in 2012 said neither of the plots against Obama or Petraeus were realistic or amounted to anything.
But bin Laden’s attack on Biden’s abilities and his forewarning of an American ‘crisis’ rings truer now than it did back then.
Biden is facing mounting fury across the world for abandoning Afghans to their fate – and yesterday it emerged that his administration was warned last month that the Afghan capital would quickly fall to the Taliban after an American withdrawal.
A dozen diplomats sent a confidential memo in a dissent channel to Secretary of State Anthony Blinken on July 13 that the Taliban was rapidly gaining ground and the city was vulnerable to collapse, the Wall Street Journal reported.
On July 8, President Biden said it was ‘highly unlikely’ the Taliban would take control of Afghanistan and denied there would be chaos in Kabul.
There are mounting questions over how the White House, the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence services were evaluating the future of Afghanistan, the threat of the Taliban and how quickly power would change hands.Dailymail.co.uk: News, Sport, Showbiz, Celebrities from Daily MailPauseNext video0:20 / 2:21SettingsFull-screenRead More
Afghan security forces were collapsing, they said, and offered ways to mitigate the advancing insurgents.
But it may have been too late to stop them.
The State Department memo, according to the report, also called for the government to use tougher language on the violence in the past from the Taliban and urged them to start collecting information for Afghan allies who qualified for Special Immigrant Visas after working with US forces.
The Journal reported that 23 Embassy staffers signed the cable and rushed to deliver it considering the deteriorating situation in Kabul.
Blinken reviewed the cable, a personal familiar with it told the paper.
State Department spokesman Ned Price told the Journal: ‘He’s made clear that he welcomes and encourages use of the dissent channel, and is committed to its revitalization. We value constructive internal dissent.’
The memo urged the administration to start flights evacuating people out of the country no later than August 1st.
A former CIA counter-terrorism chief also advised the president’s campaign Kabul would crumble within days with a depleted American presence.
But in an interview released on Thursday morning, President Biden claimed that he was never told that such a rapid collapse was possible.
And a day earlier, Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he never saw any intelligence warning that the Afghan government could fall so quickly.
‘There was nothing that I or anyone else saw that indicated a collapse of this army and this government in 11 days,’ Milley said.
Their claims were disputed in a detailed account describing the state of understanding at the CIA written by Douglas London, the agency’s former counter-terrorism chief for south and south-west Asia, which offered a very different assessment.
He said the rapid collapse was one of a number of possible scenarios.
‘Ultimately, it was assessed, Afghan forces might capitulate under the circumstances we witnessed, in projections highlighted to Trump officials and future Biden officials alike,’ he wrote on the Just Security website.
Tens of thousands of Afghans are currently trying to flee the country on mercy flights from Kabul, with babies passed over barbed wire to US soldiers Desperate Afghans hand over baby to US soldiers.
Taliban fighters swept into Kabul almost unopposed last week, and have since assumed control of the country
London, who also served as a volunteer adviser to the Biden campaign after leaving the CIA in 2019, scoffed at the president’s claim that events in Afghanistan unfolded more rapidly than expected.
‘That’s misleading at best,’ he said. ‘The CIA anticipated it as a possible scenario.’
Biden has been accused of ‘humiliating’ America on the world stage by committing himself to Trump’s plan to withdraw all US troops from Afghanistan this year.
The rapid withdrawal was followed by the equally rapid collapse of the Afghan army – which the west spent 20 years and billions of dollars training and equipping – allowing the Islamists to walk into Kabul virtually unopposed last week.
That has sparked a desperate rush to get out of the country, with tens of thousands of people gathering at the airport each day in a bid to get on one of the last evacuation flights.
Meanwhile the Taliban has started going house-to-house in a hunt for anyone who collaborated with the west, so they can be tortured and killed.
Each day brings more horrifying scenes from the airport including men falling from US planes, a teenager whose body was crushed in landing gear, women being whipped by Taliban guards and children who have been trampled.
Western nations have pledged to take more than 100,000 Afghan refugees between them but have now been forced to admit that they may not even be able to evacuate their own citizens before the air bridge is cut off.
Biden has said US troops will stay past his August 31 date for withdrawal in order to get all US passport holders out of the country – but with the Taliban now firmly in control, it remains to be seen whether he can keep that promise.
UK defence sources have said they are contingency planning for withdrawal of their own forces with as little as 24 hours notice if the Americans suddenly decide to abandon ship – a scenario they fear will put troops in danger.
BY TYLER DURDENTUESDAY, AUG 31, 2021 – 10:45 AM
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