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  1. #946
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    Yeah, I've heard of 'boy play'. Threats to spread pedophilia accusations were simply laughed at. No one would care, so no worry of public shaming.

    They seem to compete with the Saudis in terms of the worst forms of Islam, i.e. wahhabism.

    Gee, under Trump, we would have been allied with two of the worst purveyors of islam and sharia. Yikes!

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  3. #947
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    So Dreamtimer, I take it you're not a wahhabe wannabe?

    In my limited understanding of the Taliban and what I have read about the soldiers working with the Americans, it was these guys who rode into town, displaced former small town, small city, police departments, such as they were. When the new guys were placed by the Americans, in towns they had no history with, the pedophilia really ratcheted up. The stories are horrifying.

    I think, but am unsure, even thought the Taliban are full on crazy in their own way, they cracked down on the heroin trade and I imagine pedophilia too. It's not just pederasty, boy play with fairly young boys is full on pedophilia. Either way, pretty terrible.

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    Super Moderator Wind's Avatar
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    Now ISIS also detonated some suicide bombs there and the talebans are fighting them. It's just crazy.


    Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCtzVZVpRVM

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  7. #949
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    Let's not forget. Wars are entirely bipartisan affairs in the U.S. Biden was likely 100% behind the occupation of Afghanistan.

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  9. #950
    Super Moderator Wind's Avatar
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    Never thought the Taliban would one day end up being the moderates, calling for peace, reason and restraint...

    This terror attack kind of justifies the NATO pullout, these people are crazy and we should leave them the fuck alone. Churchill said as much, nearly a century ago.

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    Senior Member Emil El Zapato's Avatar
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    Quote Originally posted by Chris View Post
    Never thought the Taliban would one day end up being the moderates, calling for peace, reason and restraint...

    This terror attack kind of justifies the NATO pullout, these people are crazy and we should leave them the fuck alone. Churchill said as much, nearly a century ago.
    Twenty years ago a new world war/peace philosophy became the in-vogue thing. One of the major underpinnings of it included putting real teeth into the U.N. blue helmets. Making it essentially, a World Police Force with auspices over international bad actors. The idea was to get the superpower nations like the U.S. Europe, Russia, and China to go in and clean house, then leave and let the Police Force manage nation-building. It didn't happen because it was at that point the some of the good guys went 'bad'. Initially starting with Putin and Russia which started the quantum wobble of badness globally. The big problem with leaving the 'crazies' alone is that they are not alone. They have many fellow citizens that are no more or less crazier, dysfunctional, or evil (i.e. unenlightened), than anyone on this forum. Of course, I say that somewhat tongue-in-cheek because that is demonstrably not true.
    Last edited by Emil El Zapato, 27th August 2021 at 22:32.
    “El revolucionario: te meteré la bota en el culo"

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  17. #954
    Senior Member Emil El Zapato's Avatar
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    Quote Originally posted by Wind View Post
    You'll like this Wind ... what's his face has zero self-awareness and the Ballbuster despises him. But that's just my opinion, of course. He said and I quote: "We know that ISIS did it because they have announced it!" ... lol, now that is perspicacious journalism.

    Hey Wind, this in no way reflects on you and my opinion of you, "I love you, man". And I know you try to offer a balanced approach to your content, but your real self is magnitudes better than this garbage.


    Yes, indeed Taliban might be willing to let the U.S. go at this point, but they sure as hell are making an effort to be nicey-nicey with their rich Uncle, if indeed they are sincere.
    Last edited by Emil El Zapato, 29th August 2021 at 21:56.
    “El revolucionario: te meteré la bota en el culo"

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    You are entitled to your opinion as always, BoB.

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  21. #956
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    Absolutely stellar analysis from Dmitry Orlov:

    The Afghanistan Rout and American Glasnost’

    Recent events have forced me to interrupt regular programming to bring you a report on the developments in Afghanistan and what I believe they portend for the US. The US and NATO have finally left Afghanistan after a 20-year occupation. At this point, they are still retaining a toehold at the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, from which they are attempting to repatriate their nationals along with those Afghanis who served the occupation. These collaborators now fear for their lives from the Taliban, who have swiftly taken over almost the entire country in what was probably the most bloodless regime change operation thmat part of the world has ever experienced.

    The US occupation of Afghanistan was rationalized based on an entire edifice of lies. At its foundation lay the lie of Nineleven. Above it towered the lie of fighting terrorism (while training and equipping the terrorists). Somewhere along the way the lie of aiding Afghanistan’s development into a vibrant, modern democracy with gender equality and other bells and whistles was added to this already stupendous structure (while the only actual development was that of the heroin trade). And, of course, overlaying all of the above was a truly staggering amount of corruption and theft.

    If you believe the official narrative, Osama bin Laden was a sort of latter-day Jesus who repeated the miracle of loaves and fishes except with skyscrapers, knocking down three of them (WTC 1, 2 and 7) using just two airplanes. Another of his miracles was to make an entire passenger jet, piloted by an amateur, pull some truly stunning aerobatics that no passenger jet has pulled before or since, then ascend unto heaven through a wall of the Pentagon, engines, seats, luggage, bodies and all, leaving behind a small charred opening plus a part of a cruise missile that apparently had been hidden on board and that was subsequently carried away wrapped in a tarp on the shoulders of some very nervous and displeased-looking gentlemen in office attire. Another plane full of passengers left a smallish charred pit in the ground and recordings of rather scripted-sounding cell phone conversations held while the supposed plane was in an area lacking cell phone coverage. Bin Laden orchestrated all this mayhem by satellite phone, or by telepathy, without ever leaving the comfort of his cave in Afghanistan. I encourage you to believe this narrative because believing the alternative may cause you to lose your mind. Many people already have.

    And if you wish to be stubborn and refuse to believe the official narrative, then it becomes quite plausible to think that Nineleven was a lavish American hoax: that the three skyscrapers were mined by some Americans, that the Pentagon was hit by an American cruise missile fired by some more Americans and that Osama bin Laden was a CIA agent who made grainy videos and scratchy audiotapes to inspire America’s pet terrorists (branded Al Qaeda, later rebranded ISIS/ISIL/Daesh/Islamic Caliphate). Osama was looking forward to a comfortable retirement somewhere in friendly Pakistan—a retirement that was cut short by an attack by a group of navy seals some time after his death from kidney failure.

    Why would the Americans do this to themselves? Why, to rule the world, of course! They had bought into Douglas Mackinder’s cockamamie “heartland” theory, according to which whichever world power controls the heartland of Eurasia will control the world. If you think that controlling a pile of rocks inhabited by ornery, warlike natives whose minds are stuck in the middle ages is not conducive to ruling the entire world, then you are definitely smarter than the average turnip, but still not good enough to be one of America’s brilliant geopolitical strategists.

    The developments of Nineleven provided the rationale for the 20-year US/NATO military occupation of Afghanistan, which cost over $2 trillion and caused half a million or so wrongful deaths. This was by no means a bargain—putting a hit on someone doesn’t cost anywhere near $4 million a pop, especially not in Afghanistan, which is very poor and awash with weapons. A conservative assumption is that much of this money was simply stolen. Indeed, seeing reports of erstwhile Afghani president Ashraf Ghani fleeing the country in a helicopter so overstuffed with cash that a lot of it had to be abandoned on the tarmac is a clear indication of how funds were being allocated in the course of the US occupation.

    It is officially known that a little over half the money went to fill the coffers of four defense contractors—Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, General Dynamics, Boeing and Northrop Grumman. Their products were freely used over the entire expanse of Afghanistan, resulting in fabulous amounts of collateral damage. Some also went to arm the Afghani military, which surrendered to the Taliban without a fight, weapons and all, except for 22 military jets and 24 military helicopters which fled to Uzbekistan along with 585 soldiers. This hardware, including top of the line Black Hawk helicopters with all the recent gadgets installed, will now be picked over, and probably laughed at, by Russian experts. (The purpose of US weapons procurement is not to produce effective weapons but to make profits for Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, General Dynamics, Boeing and Northrop Grumman.)

    But, you may ask, What about the fruits of controlling the heartland? What about controlling the whole world once ensconced there? Once there, the Americans discovered that Afghanistan didn’t offer much of anything except ornery natives and poppy fields. And while the former were of no use at all as far as securing world domination, the latter, turned into heroin, could be used strategically to weaken the whole of Eurasia by turning its population into a bunch of junkies. To this end, Afghanistan was turned into the world’s heroin factory, producing 85% of the estimated global heroin and morphine supply, a near monopoly. Prior to the US/NATO invasion of Afghanistan, poppy cultivation had been banned by the Taliban, so this was entirely a Western achievement.

    The plan was to have Afghani heroin ooze out all over the surrounding Eurasia by camel caravans traversing huge uninhabitable deserts, and some of this indeed happened, but it quickly turned out that there was more money to be made by airlifting it out using US military transport planes flying to Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo, which became the major heroin transshipment point. And so a lot of the heroin ended up in the US and in the EU, to a point where there are over 10 million opiate addicts in the US and deaths from opiate overdoses in the US alone amount to half a million a year and growing fast, with drug-related deaths the leading cause of death among the non-geriatrics. But it seems that these are just the opioid addicts who stand up to be counted, whereas opiate abuse is far more widespread and, judging from rapidly dropping overall life expectancy, quite severe.

    A good question to ask is: What will happen to the heroin addicts after the Taliban once again clamp down on poppy cultivation. It will be easy for them to do now that there are no US/NATO troops guarding the poppy fields. They will make up the revenue shortfall by selling trophy US weapons on the black market. The probable answer is that the junkies will switch (and already are switching) to the synthetic opiate fentanyl, which the Chinese are happy to provide in arbitrarily large quantities. Any suggestion that the Chinese might want to stop doing so may lead to a polite mention of the Opium Wars and a suggestion that what goes around comes around. At one point a quarter of the Chinese were addicted to opium; let’s see if Americans can beat that record. To be sure, Afghani heroin is not alone to blame for the epidemic of opiate abuse in the US. The Sackler family did a great deal to construct a veritable conveyor belt that first hooked people on prescription pain killers, then abandoned them to street drugs once the prescriptions ran out. But Afghani heroin qualifies as a major US policy boomerang, alongside many others.

    Another good question to ask is: Whence the urge to dominate the world by seizing control of the heartland and inundating it with heroin (and Afghani refugees)? There is certainly the need to keep the military-industrial complex humming and funneling money to congressional election coffers, and then there is the general megalomaniacal ambition of various Washingtonians of both parties, but that’s far from all. The overarching need to disrupt, degrade and generally wreak havoc is a key element of America’s overall business plan, which is to continue to live beyond its means simply by printing money.

    The only way to make this business plan work is for the US to present itself as an island of stability in a chaotic world and a financial safe haven where the world’s thieving oligarchs can safely launder their ill-gotten gains. Once this plan fails, the US will fall through third-world-dom and straight into an endless Civil War reenactment with live ammo. Hence all the current Sturm und Drang over the US/NATO hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan.

    Because who cares about Afghanistan? Sure, it has heroin, but fentanyl is even more potent and doesn’t involve all the messiness with growing poppies and harvesting and processing poppy juice. And excuse me if I don’t believe that dead US servicemen or US nationals left behind qualify as some sort of national tragedy; it’s what typically happens in a hasty retreat. And when have Americans not abandoned their local allies? The Kurds of Northern Syria, which retreating Americans abandoned to the ever-so-friendly Turks, are the last example that springs to mind; but how many Americans still remember even that far back. It’s simply what Americans do—always.

    This hasty retreat signals, somewhere in the deep subconscious (because the realization is too painful) the end of the something-for-nothing economy on which the US has increasingly come to depend since Nixon took the US dollar off the gold standard 50 years ago. This disease may have been slow to develop, but it is chronic, incurable and invariably fatal. The 2021 US federal budget is $6.8 trillion and the budget deficit is $3 trillion, meaning that out of every dollar spent 44 cents are printed into existence. This is a hospice care-level dosage of financial morphine.

    At this point no amount of financial morphine will allow the American patient to arise from his bed, yank the IV from his arm and go and wreak even more havoc in the world, sowing fear and chaos. The fear and chaos are now right within the US itself. The $753.5 billion the US is spending on defense in 2021 is more than the next nine highest-spending countries spend combined, but it’s not enough to cause sufficient mayhem to scare the entire world into continuing to honor the US dollar in international trade or to invest in dollar-denominated assets; all that’s left is financial inertia and a bit of excitement around the world’s largest market bubble which the US federal reserve is desperately blowing.

    The mental anguish produced by this situation results in dire media images from the Kabul airport. Ignored is the fact that the rest of Afghanistan has suddenly become rather placid, with bright-eyed, bushy-bearded Taliban lads armed with the latest and greatest US weapons patrolling markets and street corners. ISIS-K, America’s pet terrorists in Afghanistan, of the Bin Laden/Al Qaeda pedigree, have gone quiet. They used to regularly organize bomb blasts in Kabul, routinely killing hundreds of locals, but now the only place where they still blow people up is at the airport, which is also the only area still under American control.

    The Americans were nice enough to share their clever battle plan with their NATO allies, which is why Lord Pederast of England and Madame Petite-Pute of France (I can’t be bothered to look up their actual names) went public with news of this terrorist attack well before it transpired. Thirteen US servicemen died; many more locals died because surviving US servicemen opened fire on the victims. Nobody got court-martialed and nobody resigned; this is business as usual. Why the boys of ISIS-K were charged with this mission is obvious. The Americans need a reason to cut short the evacuation of their nationals and their local Afghani servants, as demanded by the Taliban, and now they have an excuse: the safety of their servicemen is paramount.

    The American retreat from Afghanistan was inevitable, but what has amazed and appalled the entire world is the simply unimaginable boneheadedness ham-handedness of the operation at every level. Compared to the Soviet withdrawal, it is a profound national humiliation. The Soviets withdrew in battle order, flags flying, and left behind a functional government that stayed in power for another three years, successfully resisting Western efforts at overthrowing it, and only fell when Soviet support stopped because the USSR had collapsed—essentially because of Gorbachev’s treason. But the Afghanis remember and still like the Russians, still call them “Shuravi” (Soviets) and are grateful to Russia for everything that it had built there. The Russian embassy in Kabul is fully staffed and functioning normally, maintaining well-established channels of communication with the Taliban. In contrast, over their 20-year occupation the Americans have built nothing, destroyed much, and are by now almost universally hated and despised.

    I believe that the extreme and apparent incompetence of the Americans in Afghanistan is the result of the corrosive effect of lies. A foundation of lies is inevitably a shaky one and can only be kept from crumbling under carefully controlled circumstances. For instance, a certain shady oligarch may promote a certain vaccine as effective against a certain virus whereas his real intention is to stop population growth by making women sterile. This works because corporate structures can be organized around a management strategy known as mushroom theory (keep them in the dark and feed them shit). But it doesn’t work for an entire sprawling military empire, where the truth inevitably leaks out, contradictions mount and morale plummets. One lie always deserves another, and then the making of mistakes, the efforts to fix mistakes and the efforts to hide mistakes all become largely interchangeable. At one point the CIA’s terrorists were battling the Pentagon’s terrorists in Syria. That was really awkward and hard to hide. Luckily, the Russians fixed that problem by bombing them all into oblivion.

    The Afghanistan occupation started with the horrendous lies of Nineleven, continued with the ridiculous, contrived excuses for the invasion and then went on for 20 long years, each much like the previous, with each year’s lies piling on top of the previous years’ lies. America had to stay because of the terrorism caused by the terrorists whom they first organized to fight the Soviets, then kept as pets. And now speaking the truth in America is akin to shouting fire in a crowded theater. Poor old Joe Biden, his brain ticking ever more loudly, struggling to form a coherent sentence, laboring under the crushing load of these lies, can do no better than assume the fetal position right in the middle of a press conference. Can you imagine what Bedlam would break out if he were to suddenly stop lying? I shudder to think! Stocking up on thorazine beforehand would seem prudent. But such a bout of American glasnost’ seems all but inevitable. Sooner or later the truth will spill over this giant dam brimming with lies. The ensuing flood is sure to sweep away everything in its path.
    Last edited by Aragorn, 30th August 2021 at 18:39. Reason: you-you double-double-posted-posted :p

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    I've not read the above yet, but I can say that we did do this to ourselves.

    If you noticed the video of Beau's I posted in the Common Sense thread, he asks the question, Who is to blame? My answer before listening to him was 'Us!'

    The politics here after 9/11, especially when we decided to take our eye off the ball in Afghanistan and go into Iraq, have sucked the big one.

    There was unity for a couple weeks. Then the litmus test of "Support the Troops!" started and if you didn't support the wars then you weren't a patriot. Imagine decades of this sort of politics. You're not a deserving citizen if you don't go along.

    Here we are, at the nth degree with folks wanting revolution/civil war. It's been a step by step process.


    We are responsible for the shit show we created and we're responsible for the Taliban now being in charge of Afghanistan.

    We knew the nation-building wouldn't work. We claimed that's not what we were doing. And then we did it anhyway. If you questioned it you were supporting the terrorists. It's been fucked up for a long time.

    Americans have been at odds with each other since the eighties really ramped up the divisive politics (yeah, it's the eighties fault). Now EVERYTHING is politicized and a person can't even take a common sense protective measure without possibly being assaulted by another American who wants to call them names and spit in their face.

    It's so gross.

    And it's no wonder we fucked up Afghanistan. We've had our heads up our asses for some time now.

    I read Fiasco and Hubris back in the day.

    I don't think we've learned a damn thing.

    It's tragically apropos that folks are dosing themselves with animal meds and then 'pooping worms' which is more likely their protective intestinal linings (mucus or actual tissue).

    They're literally harming themselves, potentially long-term because of fucked up politics. And if they catch Covid, with digestive systems that are already screwed, they're in for a nasty long-term battle and a lot of suffering.

    Frankly, when someone says 'they don't want to talk politics', there's not much left to talk about since EVERYTHING has been politicized.

    We politicized our values with this stupid war. (Iraq too)

    (I'm sorry I'm cursing a lot today. I really don't like seeing completely unnecessary death and suffering. It's so epically stupid. That word applies because we have no excuse. We know better. As a nation we've been and are being STUPID).
    Last edited by Aragorn, 31st August 2021 at 14:19. Reason: post merge; second post was obviously intended as an edit of first post

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    Quote Originally posted by Dreamtimer View Post
    I've not read the above yet, but I can say that we did do this to ourselves.

    If you noticed the video of Beau's I posted in the Common Sense thread, he asks the question, Who is to blame? My answer before listening to him was 'Us!'

    The politics here after 9/11, especially when we decided to take our eye off the ball in Afghanistan and go into Iraq, have sucked the big one.

    There was unity for a couple weeks. Then the litmus test of "Support the Troops!" started and if you didn't support the wars then you weren't a patriot. Imagine decades of this sort of politics. You're not a deserving citizen if you don't go along.

    Here we are, at the nth degree with folks wanting revolution/civil war. It's been a step by step process.


    We are responsible for the shit show we created and we're responsible for the Taliban now being in charge of Afghanistan.

    We knew the nation-building wouldn't work. We claimed that's not what we were doing. And then we did it anhyway. If you questioned it you were supporting the terrorists. It's been fucked up for a long time.

    Americans have been at odds with each other since the eighties really ramped up the divisive politics (yeah, it's the eighties fault). Now EVERYTHING is politicized and a person can't even take a common sense protective measure without possibly being assaulted by another American who wants to call them names and spit in their face.

    It's so gross.

    And it's no wonder we fucked up Afghanistan. We've had our heads up our asses for some time now.

    I read Fiasco and Hubris back in the day.

    I don't think we've learned a damn thing.
    I like to watch videos where people compare life between America and Europe.

    These are usually Americans who have also lived in Europe (usually Germany, France or the Netherlands) for many years. Some have permanently settled in Europe, others moved back to the US after a few years. One thing they all report is a reverse culture shock, particularly in regards to Americans' attitudes towards politics and violence.

    It is apparently common in the US to have somebody point a gun at you from a neighbouring car because they didn't like the way you drive. That is insane. The amount of murders, especially shootings is off the charts, something you just don't see in Europe. The US is a violent country with a militaristic culture and an incredible array of dangerous weapons spread around the whole population. That is likely to lead to mass violence at some point down the road. I expect it will culminate in a civil war of sorts.

    I follow right-wing nut-jobs (to be clear, I'm not saying they are nuts because they are right-wing, their political views are incidental to their nuttiness), mostly for entertainment purposes. The way they talk about democrats is dehumanising, they refer to them as cockroaches, demons, rats, baby-killers, etc... This kind of language is often a precursor to major violence, even genocide. It would be very easy to point to similar language being used in pre-genocide Rwanda, Cambodia or Germany.

    If you add all those ingredients together, the mix is quite combustible. I shall be greatly surprised if the US escapes major civil violence this decade and I truly hope I'm wrong, but the trends and the signs are unmistakable.

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  27. #959
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    "It is officially known that a little over half the money went to fill the coffers of four defense contractors—Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, General Dynamics, Boeing and Northrop Grumman. Their products were freely used over the entire expanse of Afghanistan, resulting in fabulous amounts of collateral damage. Some also went to arm the Afghani military, which surrendered to the Taliban without a fight, weapons and all, except for 22 military jets and 24 military helicopters which fled to Uzbekistan along with 585 soldiers. This hardware, including top of the line Black Hawk helicopters with all the recent gadgets installed, will now be picked over, and probably laughed at, by Russian experts. (The purpose of US weapons procurement is not to produce effective weapons but to make profits for Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, General Dynamics, Boeing and Northrop Grumman.)"

    I was actually looking forward to reading this, I must say I was disappointed.

    Not even close Chris ... I know from personal experience, it just doesn't work that way... They might have left some antiquated equipment behind but nothing worthy of any spy's efforts.
    “El revolucionario: te meteré la bota en el culo"

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    Quote Originally posted by BeastOfBologna View Post
    "It is officially known that a little over half the money went to fill the coffers of four defense contractors—Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, General Dynamics, Boeing and Northrop Grumman. Their products were freely used over the entire expanse of Afghanistan, resulting in fabulous amounts of collateral damage. Some also went to arm the Afghani military, which surrendered to the Taliban without a fight, weapons and all, except for 22 military jets and 24 military helicopters which fled to Uzbekistan along with 585 soldiers. This hardware, including top of the line Black Hawk helicopters with all the recent gadgets installed, will now be picked over, and probably laughed at, by Russian experts. (The purpose of US weapons procurement is not to produce effective weapons but to make profits for Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, General Dynamics, Boeing and Northrop Grumman.)"

    I was actually looking forward to reading this, I must say I was disappointed.

    Not even close Chris ... I know from personal experience, it just doesn't work that way... They might have left some antiquated equipment behind but nothing worthy of any spy's efforts.
    You're wrong about that.

    The Afghan military was extremely well-equipped as Uncle Joe boasted about just a few weeks ago. They were more than 300.000 strong and had the latest US equipment. All of that was surrendered to the Taliban without a fight. None of it has been repatriated to the US.

  30. The Following 3 Users Say Thank You to Chris For This Useful Post:

    Aragorn (1st September 2021), Emil El Zapato (1st September 2021), Octopus Garden (2nd September 2021)

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