It seems shocking that a government entity that has the word "aid" in its acronym would ever be accused of doing dirty tricks and worse against the friends and foes of the U.S., much less be defanged or shut down by Donald Trump. For the world's lefties this defanging is unthinkable. But now, we're finding out all kinds of skullduggery attributed to our color revolutionistas at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), Victoria Nuland, and Samantha Power and their kindred through the years. And color revolution coups have been their specialty. See Ukraine 2014.

Need a race riot in Africa? No problem, USAID is your go-to riot planner. Want to force out a democratically elected president? Call USAID for an information onslaught guaranteed to get rid of any elected populist. Need conservatives censored? Call USAID.

But you may not have heard this one unless you follow the work of former CIA targeter and Defense Department operative Sarah Adams. See her interview on the "Shawn Ryan Show" podcast below.

She tracked the Al-Qaeda operation and operators that Jake Sullivan and Hillary Clinton denied were part the Benghazi attack and proved it was a preplanned Al-Qaeda terrorist attack.

And Adams has tracked-back the money being sent by the United States government to our enemies—the people we went to war against to settle the score for 9/11.

Catherine reports nearby that USAID dollars support Iran's proxies Hamas. If that's shocking, then you'll want to sit down for this next revelation. The U.S. State Department and USAID pay millions of dollars per week to the Taliban, the bin Laden family leading the group, and the Haqqani terror network. Remember those guys? Didn't we wage a 20-year-long war to get rid of them ...??? //

And now, as Adams reckons, we pay the Taliban and all the above parties between $40-87 million per week that is carried on a plane complete with a bag man who doles out the payoffs. //

We pay our enemies—and they're our enemies—millions per week. We share intelligence with them, and we left our other enemy, China, in the driver's seat in Afghanistan. How does this help the United States? Both the U.S. State Department and USAID and the Pentagon made that happen.

Whose side are they on? //

And even though we're paying them millions per month, Adams says Al-Qaeda terrorists who's training camps we're paying for have gone gotten visas from Brazil, come up through Panama's Darien Gap, and entered our country for Hamas-like attacks in the U.S. Thanks, Joe Biden.

I know Trump talked about negotiating with the Taliban to get out of Afghanistan when he was President #45, but considering that the USAID employees were attempting to sidestep his foreign policy priorities (and were fired for it), wouldn't it be a good idea to get a reckoning of how much we're paying these terrorists to kill us? //

Hogan testified Friday that the story he green-lit prior to publication did not include the term “black market,” and that it was Jake Tapper who included that term.

“The text of the story did not do that,” Hogan testified. “The banner and Jake Tapper’s lead-in did that.”

Nonetheless, Hogan later testified that he thought describing the situation as a “black market” was “accurate” and disputed the allegation that “black market” has a “negative connotation.”

Young alleges the use of the term “black market” to describe his evacuation efforts “rendered Young permanently unemployable” because it implied Young was involved in illegal conduct. Young later testified that his defense contracts expressly prohibited involvement in “black markets.” Notably, a court also found Young did not commit a crime. //

Young had previously testified that he needed more than two hours to respond to the inquiry to seek guidance from other individuals and organizations he worked with. Young also said in messages to Marquardt that the two-hour deadline was “definitely not a realistic deadline” but that “in any case, I can tell you for sure, some of your facts/assertions [are] not accurate, and if they are published, I will seek legal damages.”

CNN still aired the segment, shared it on social media and CNN’s website, and re-aired the segment before later issuing an apology months later. Young is seeking punitive damages.

In Afghanistan, tribalism is at a virtually unparalleled level. Westerners have no idea how deeply disturbing that tribalism can be. //

The following is an excerpt from If It Takes a Thousand Years: From Al-Qaeda to Hamas, How the Jihadists Think & How to Defeat Them. //

When analyzing our Islamic extremist enemies, it is important for the American people to understand the tribal mindset that so many of our enemies come from. Islam developed from tribal cultures, and many tribal cultures over the past 1,400 years developed under Islam. The Islamic world itself is divided into what I would describe as tribes; you have the Sunni tribe, the Shia tribe, and within that are thousands of other tribes, one of the most recent being the “Palestinian” tribe which has become somewhat of a self-appointed identity by various lost members of other tribes. But in Afghanistan, tribalism is at a level that is virtually unparalleled in the world. //

Most people there got it. But back in Washington, and among so many in the higher ranks in the military trying to please those in Washington, there was a complete disconnect from the reality on the ground, and a complete misunderstanding of just who our enemy is, how they think, and how ferociously determined they are.

LTG Donahue refused to open the gates at HKIA despite Marines reporting up the chain of command that American passport holding citizens were trying to get in to evacuate. In addition to the statements from Marines, we had plenty of other evidence of Americans trying to get into HKIA to evacuate.

Donahue was the ground commander who ultimately made the decision to not get those Americans out. We can banter back and forth about security and other critical elements of why he chose to do what he did, but I can’t sidestep or forgive a commander not making every attempt to get those Americans out who were standing at the gate, talking directly to the Marines, and being refused entry.

The other nonsense about the fake photo op of “last boots on ground” that was proven false due to the Air Force load master being the last to get on the airplane and an entire medical unit still being on ground conducting operations well after the evacuation, plus borrowing the equipment from the delta team that was with him to take a cool guy photo, can be shrugged off.

Making an effort to use critical space on the airplanes to take home a Toyota Land Cruiser with a mounted anti-aircraft gun as a war trophy, instead of human beings, or at the very least the dozens of working dogs that were left to die in kennels at the hands of the Taliban, can also be shrugged off.

What I can’t shrug off is leaving American citizens behind in Afghanistan when they were standing at the gates with their passports out pleading with the Marine guards to let them in. He shouldn’t have been allowed to pin on a third star, let alone a fourth. //

Hopefully, this will be more than a blip on the radar, and Donahue's promotion is scuttled. As he was the prime mover in renaming Fort Bragg to "Fort Liberty," it would be more than poetic justice if his upward trajectory ended just as Fort Bragg got its rightful name back.

Jesse Kelly
@JesseKellyDC
·
Follow
There’s nothing in the world that would help the morale of the men than to see a flag officer face real punishment the same way the guys on the ground have.

You officers have no idea how much resentment your little club has created in the troops.
Barry R McCaffrey
@mccaffreyr3
Trump plans to recall retired officers to active duty to court martial them for Afghan withdrawal will be a disaster for military morale and a political bomb for him. The Uniform Code of Military Justice is a codified Congressional statute and operates under Federal law…. not…
3:57 PM · Nov 19, 2024 //

You're dang right it's politically-motivated. The general class is infested with left-wing partisans who put politics above the rank-and-file, sometimes with deadly consequences. The purge is coming, and no amount of crybagging from the press is going to stop it. Buckle up.

Jeffrey Goldberg published a bombshell story that convulsed the nation. No, I’m not talking about his recent Atlantic magazine piece claiming, based on the testimony of four anonymous sources, that President Trump had grossly disrespected America’s dead and wounded warriors in 2018.

I’m talking about Goldberg’s New Yorker feature claiming that “the relationship between Saddam’s regime and ­al-Qaeda is far closer than previously thought.” Published less than a year after 9/11, the story fed into the fervid pro-war atmosphere that then gripped the nation.

Headlined “The Great Terror,” the essay was based on a reporting trip to Iraq’s northern Kurdish zone. It recounted, in terrifying and admirable detail, Saddam Hussein’s 1988 poison-gas assault against Kurdish civilians in the village of Halabja.

Along the way, Goldberg did other things, too — chief among them, speaking to alleged terrorist detainees in a prison run by a pro-regime-change Kurdish faction.

The mostly unnamed prisoners, per Goldberg, informed him “that the intelligence service of Saddam Hussein has joint control, with al-Qaeda operatives, over [a local jihadist faction]; that Saddam Hussein hosted a senior leader of al-Qaeda in Baghdad in 1992; that a number of al-Qaeda members fleeing ­Afghanistan have been secretly brought into territory controlled by [the local jihadists]; and that Iraqi intelligence agents smuggled conventional weapons, and possibly even chemical and biological weapons, into Afghanistan.” //

Pretty chilling stuff. The Bush administration made Saddam’s ties to al-Qaeda a key plank of its case for regime change. The war happened. Saddam was toppled. But in the years that followed, the Iraq-al-Qaeda link posited by Goldberg unraveled.

there's a new debate hoax raging. It centers on Trump's comments about threatening "Abdul," who he cited as a Taliban leader he negotiated with in 2020. The mention sent the fingers of journalists everywhere scurrying on keyboards. Multiple major news outlets, including The Hill and Forbes, wrote mocking headlines and suggested it was "unclear" who Trump was referring to because he's just so darn stupid.

“I got involved. And Abdul is the head of the Taliban. He is still the head of the Taliban,” Trump said. “And I told Abdul, ‘Don’t do it anymore. You do it anymore, you’re going to have problems.’ And he said, ‘Why do you send me a picture of my house?’ I said, ‘You’re going to have to figure that out, Abdul.’ And for 18 months we had nobody killed.”

It’s not clear who Trump was referring to.

Hibatullah Akhundzada is the Taliban’s leader, having been in charge since 2016.

It wasn't unclear, though. I know that because if you read the very same articles I linked above, both go on to explain exactly who Trump was talking about.

Abdul Ghani Baradar is not an obscure figure. He is the co-founder of the Taliban and currently serves as the terrorist government's "prime minister." He was also the lead negotiator and head of policy during the 2020 negotiations. So who is dumber? Trump for citing "Abdul," or the know-nothing journalists who couldn't be bothered to use Google for two minutes? //

RedDog_FLA
an hour ago
This is Golden:

Cable news is filled with over-credentialed mediocrities with the common sense of a lima bean.

That tells everything. //

anon-dion
25 minutes ago
It doesn't matter Journalists can't seem to do their job anymore. Used to be an investigative reporter would run down all the fact and report the results without bias. Now only a handful do. I can think of Catherine Harris, Glen Greenwald, and Matt Tiabi. Everyone else is just trying to score points and get clicks. A sign of a dying media is the need for sensationalism and yellow journalist tactics. //

Arik
27 minutes ago
Wait a minute. Did Kamala mean MANDATORY transgender surgeries for illegals in prison???

Puts a whole new light on it. 😁 //

Rogue Rose
23 minutes ago
Their endless lies are exhausting

KJSpeed Rogue Rose
4 minutes ago
I concur. Kind of like The Boy Who Cried Wolf. They're trying to push us to the point that we challenge everything they say as a lie, then they spin it as "those right-wing MAGA nuts are trying to say that everything we tell you is a lie. Don't believe them!" John and Jane Doe begin to think the liars are telling the truth and everyone that disagrees with them is a liar. Right before the wolf eats them.

The Vigilant Fox 🦊

@VigilantFox
Congressman Wesley Hunt Reveals Jaw-Dropping Trump Story

This is amazing.

In a tense meeting with Taliban leaders, Trump declared, “I want to leave Afghanistan, but it’s going to be a conditions-based withdrawal,” before issuing a stark warning.

“If you harm a hair on a single American, I’m going to kill you,” Trump said. The translator conveyed this exact message.

Trump then “reached in his pocket, pulled out a satellite photo of the leader of the Taliban’s home, handed it to him, got up and walked out the room.”
12:43 PM · Jul 2, 2024
·
9.6M
Views

Steve Guest @SteveGuest
·
Kamala’s Harris’s campaign is completely detached from reality.

Here is Kamala on video bragging about being the last person in the room when the admin made the political and soon to be catastrophic decision to leave Afghanistan.

Alex Thompson @AlexThomp
In a new statement, Harris’ campaign argues that “Trump’s chaotic actions led to catastrophic consequences in Afghanistan.”

Some R’s agree that Trump cut a bad deal with the Taliban but the new Biden admin debated options on trying to change the deal and went w/ Biden’s plan
5:00 PM · Sep 7, 2024 //

Shelby Talcott @ShelbyTalcott
The Harris campaign is blaming the chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal on Donald Trump, arguing that he “left the Biden-Harris Administration with zero plans for an orderly withdrawal.”

Comes as Trump has ramped up his criticism of the administration over the withdrawal & the deadly…
4:39 PM · Sep 7, 2024

Stephen L. Miller @redsteeze
·
That wasn't Trump who closed the airfields, bottlenecked everyone into Kabul Airport which resulted in bodies falling from the sky, the death of 13 US Service members by a suicide bomber , and drone strikes a van full of innocent kids in return.

And then only took 6 questions… Show more

Matt Whitlock @mattdizwhitlock
·
Kamala in 2021: I was the last person in the room to advise Biden before he made this momentous decision

Kamala in 2024: Trump made us do it.

Come on lol. //

This is astonishing.

First, the Biden-Harris administration extended the deadline for months anyway, so the point about the timing doesn't even make sense. They didn't comply with what had been worked out to begin with. As I said at the time, Biden's response was sociopathic. He said that he disagreed with people who said he should have started getting people out earlier. Because he didn't do that and pulled the military out before that, he then needed to surge more military in after everything blew up.

Second, are they really saying they failed and had such a disaster because they were too ignorant and had to depend on plans left over from the Trump administration? Was that what was necessary to get it done right? That's what they seemed to be admitting. How incompetent are they?

Plus, let's review what the Biden-Harris team previously claimed something about the withdrawal. Biden claimed it was an "extraordinary success." And Kamala Harris? She bragged that she was the last person in the room; she was "comfortable" with the decision: //

So, was Kamala lying then and/or is she lying now? Either way, she's lying and it's not a good look when, once again, they take no responsibility and try to blame someone else for their own actions. No one has been held accountable for any of the failures over Afghanistan, including the deaths of the 13 Americans, and the Biden-Harris team has refused to even speak with the families of the 13.

She is absolutely shameless.

It's also just not that relevant and ignores the bigger issue at play. Harris couldn't even be bothered to show up for the dignified transfer at Dover Air Force Base despite taking credit for the withdrawal that got the service members in question killed. She was never going to show up for this wreath-laying ceremony and everyone knows it. It's also been established that she won't return the calls of the families anyway so Harris not receiving a formal invite isn't surprising. You'd need to pick up the phone for that.

I have no idea why Harris continues to lean into this. The right move from the beginning was to shut up about the issue and just let it fade. By attacking Trump (and by proxy, the Gold Star families who wanted the pictures taken), the vice president has pumped new life into a story that does not play in her favor. Going after Gold Star families is never a good look, and using the biased press to do it via anonymous sources (in this case, an aide) looks even worse.

Harris has had the opportunity to do the right thing for years. She hasn't done so. She has no moral authority to criticize others over respecting America's war dead when she clearly doesn't do so herself. //

Outerlimitsfan
2 hours ago
Trump is a good guy. Apparently he has been in contact with the families for years, and even hosted them before at a private event. He is actually friends with them now. Which is exactly why they invited him to this.

He didn't just show up to Arlington for 10 minutes either, but was with them for over 4 hours.

Yeah, I'm shocked the Gold Star families support the guy who actually cares about them and the fact their children needlessly died. //

anon-608f Bluepillprofessor
an hour ago
You beat me to it. This is intentional. She and her staff despise, they HATE, these families because they put the lie to the Afghan "success" story...and have been quite vocal about it.

It's just that simple. These families never targeted her for any attacks or lies, and they didn't need to. All they needed to do was tell the truth, show some grief, and Heelz Up let that hatred flow!

The claim that Trump made "campaign content" at Arlington National Cemetery is simply false. None of the pictures with the family have been used in ads or placed in a political context by the Trump campaign. He was there at the behest of the Gold Star families. Given their children died defending this country, I think they have a right to snap a few pictures if they'd like.

This game has long been played left and the federal bureaucracy. When John McCain took some video of him walking among the gravestones, the press attacked him for it. When Barack Obama and Joe Biden did the same thing (including Biden being pictured in Section 60), no one said a word. No ANC official came running out telling them to put the cameras away while accusing them of breaking the rules. Let a Republican show up to honor the fallen though, and suddenly it's a scandal. The entire thing is so transparent.

“President Trump has called. President Trump shows up. President Trump takes the time to hear our loved ones’ stories, why won’t you do the same?”

Former President Donald Trump visited Arlington National Cemetery on Monday, as August 26 marked three years since President Joe Biden’s absolutely disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan that left 13 American servicemen dead.

Unlike Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, who were nowhere to be found, Trump’s visited the important site in-person — but the media still found a way to court controversy.

Many in the establishment media took turns criticizing Trump’s team for photographing and videoing the occasion at Section 60 — the eastern part of the cemetery — old footage of Biden has resurfaced of him doing the same thing. //

https://twitter.com/JoeBiden/status/1264936762570407936

Joe Biden @JoeBiden
·
To all the members of our military and our military families, especially those who have lost their service member, thank you. We owe you. We can never lessen the magnitude of your loss, but this I can promise you: we will never forget. #MemorialDay
[embedded video]
11:10 AM · May 25, 2020 //

At the one-minute mark, the ad shows Biden at Arlington Cemetery as he was photographed there on May 31, 2010, while vice president to former President Barack Obama.

This is all to say, the very thing the Trump is being bashed for, the Biden campaign did in 2020.

It is undeniable this is a campaign ad.

The clip ends with a message saying, “Text Joe to 30330” while “PAID FOR BY BIDEN FOR PRESIDENT” runs across the bottom of the screen. //

To note, the Gold Star families issued an official statement expressing their support for Trump and stating their approval for filming and photography on Monday.

What should be angering to the public, and what should be covered by the media, is Biden’s and Harris’ complete no-show.

They are responsible for the catastrophe that took place three years ago that saw American lives lost and billions of dollars in military hardware left behind for the Taliban.

Whatever feelings there are about Trump and his upcoming election bid, the Gold Star families wanted him there and he showed up.

That’s far more than the current White House occupants can say.

Taxpayer-subsidized National Public Radio shouldn’t be a starting place for aggressively biased coverage against either Democrats or Republicans. But you can ask Clarence Thomas how the machine works.

On Aug. 27, NPR veterans affairs reporter Quil Lawrence lit into former President Donald Trump for bringing cameras to a section of Arlington National Cemetery with some families of soldiers killed during President Joe Biden’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan.

The entire manufactured controversy is perverse. It’s obvious NPR is exploiting the cemetery for a political goal, and it then spread to the rest of the national media. Trump is showing support for grieving Gold Star families, while Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris would not appear. They were MIA. But Trump was singled out as the one with grotesque political optics, not the no-shows whose negligence cost American lives.

They weren’t seriously considering the Biden-Harris disaster on “All Things Considered.” They could call it “All Democrats Defended.” Conservatives quickly found snapshots from private photographers of Biden in the same sacred section of the Arlington cemetery. That thing cannot be “considered.”

Speaker Johnson had to intervene to get Trump into Arlington National Cemetery for the anniversary of the withdrawal from Afghanistan with Gold Star families. //

The Gold Star families, who lost their children during the Biden administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, invited Trump to Arlington National Cemetery. He laid a wreath there for the 13 servicemembers who were killed serving their country in Afghanistan. However, a Gold Star family told the Caller that Arlington National Cemetery was trying to make it difficult for the former President to appear for the ceremony to honor their children, something the families requested.

Arlington National Cemetery told Gold Star families that they could only be there for a specific time that did not work for everyone’s schedule and were also told the president could not join them at their children’s gravesites, the family told the Caller. //

Republican California Rep. Darrell Issa has called on Biden to meet with these Gold Star families on multiple occasions, his office told the Caller. He was present for the ceremonies on Monday and had been in contact with Arlington National Cemetery leading up to the anniversary, his office said.

“This administration absolutely interfered with the tributes to the 13 fallen. In its war on Trump, it made the Gold Star families collateral damage,” Issa told the Caller. //

“Arlington Cemetery officials claimed the families didn’t want any media, photography, or videography at Section 60, contradicting what the families had actually requested. The families were fine with the media, designated by the Trump team, but Arlington kept pushing back, obstructing the process,” the source continued. “This would have not happened without Speaker Johnson.”

Hoover told the Caller in an emotional phone call that he and other Gold Star family members were the ones who called Trump and asked for him to show up. He also criticized the Biden administration for not contacting them for the past three years.

The New York Times published a piece essentially trashing the Gold Star families who invited Donald Trump to Arlington National Cemetery on Monday.

As RedState reported, the president appeared at a ceremony honoring the 13 murdered American service members who died during the Abbey Gate Bombing. The devastating event unfolded in August of 2021 amid the Biden-Harris administration's incompetent withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris neither showed up for the ceremony nor gave live statements commemorating the third anniversary of the deaths. Instead, the president vacationed on the beach while Harris continued campaigning. That did nothing but underscore the complete lack of accountability stemming from their decision-making. //

What makes this even more ridiculous is that Joe Biden used shots of Arlington National Cemetery and flag-draped caskets in a political ad back in June. You can even see the names on the gravestones in the video with the caption by Biden reading "Donald Trump doesn’t know a damn thing about service to his country." //

Did Maggie Haberman and the Times mention that? Did they suggest it broke the rules of politicizing Arlington National Cemetery and the deaths of American service members? Did any reporters call up the families of those whose gravestones were shown? Of course, not.

The moment the Gold Star families said they wanted the cameras there and asked to take pictures with the former president, that should have been the end of it. //

Haberman, the Times, and the rest have now spent more time freaking out over Trump showing up to honor the fallen than they have critiquing those who got them killed. It's deranged. //

bk
4 minutes ago
For Memorial Day three months ago, Biden visited Arlington and talked about all the things his administration had done for the military and for vets. (Of course Beau was mentioned too.) Nothing political at all about that from the man who was running for reelection.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2024/05/27/remarks-by-president-biden-at-the-156th-national-memorial-day-observance-arlington-va/

In his resignation letter, Dunleavy criticized how the committee conducted its investigation into the Afghanistan withdrawal and the series of failures involved in the disaster. He describes the situation as "a diplomatic failure, an intelligence failure, a military failure, a strategic failure, a policy failure, a planning failure, a political failure, a truth-telling failure, and a moral failure" and stresses that each of these aspects needed thorough investigation.

The investigator explained that his efforts to look into key aspects of the withdrawal were “repeatedly stymied by our chief investigator and by senior staff,” which resulted in what he calls “investigative paralysis.”

Much of Dunleavy’s frustration stems from a reluctance to hold high-ranking officials accountable for their missteps – especially Vice President Kamala Harris, who he describes as a key decision-maker in the withdrawal. //

In his closing remarks, Dunleavy expressed concerns that the failures of the Afghanistan withdrawal have not been adequately addressed and fears these oversights will have serious consequences for future U.S. foreign policy.

they aren't expensive either, but I digress. All told he was missing probably a dozen or so pieces of equipment that added up to $500 to $1,000. He was being screwed over for actions he was ordered to do by his superiors and now he's paying the price for it, literally.

That ladies and gentlemen, is getting what we called in the Marines, screwed by the big green weenie. We actually have an acronym for it, BOHICA. Which stands for Bend Over, Here It Comes Again.

The sad part is that it is a common occurrence, both the green weenie and paying for losses of gear and or other equipment that was lost or destroyed in the course of our duties at no fault of our own. Some examples that I saw of these were both hilarious and infuriating at the same time. //

It is more than just an administration problem, it is a problem within the military as a whole. //

But sure, let's tack on an extra $500-$1,000 to repay the government, along with a Defense Department, that has enough resources, money, or credit, to absorb that cost for miscellaneous gear like an e-tool. That is a giant slap in the face to the very people who literally put their lives on the line in some jobs, to defend this Nation. They need to do better, much much better. //

thinkingoutloud
3 minutes ago
So, did Biden's paycheck get used to pay back the US taxpayers for the "gear" he intentionally left in Afghanistan?