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Confirmed: Biden Killed 7 Children to Distract from His Afghanistan Debacle
After terrorists killed 13 Americans and 169 Afghans, the Biden administration needed a success to distract from his disastrous Kabul withdrawal. Three days later, the White House celebrated a drone strike.
“U.S. military forces conducted a self-defense unmanned over-the-horizon airstrike today on a vehicle in Kabul, eliminating an imminent ISIS-K threat to Hamad Karzai International airport,” U.S. Central Command spokesman Navy Capt. Bill Urban announced Aug. 29. “We are confident we successfully hit the target. Significant secondary explosions from the vehicle indicated the presence of a substantial amount of explosive material,” he added.
Within hours, skepticism grew. Who was targeted? Did the Taliban provide the “intelligence?” Were civilians hurt?
On Sept. 1, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley scoffed at the doubters. He asserted the Pentagon “went through the same level of rigor that we’ve done for years” and “the procedures were correctly followed and it was a righteous strike.” It seems the drone strike enjoyed “the same level of rigor” as our slapdash withdrawal.
Today, two weeks later in a Friday afternoon news dump, the US military admitted it was all a lie.
The target was Zemari Ahmadi, a longtime US aid worker who spent the day transporting colleagues to and from work in his Toyota Corolla. When he was done, he filled his trunk with water bottles to take home to his family. As his car pulled into the courtyard of the densely populated residential block, his children ran to greet him. One of the happy kids jumped behind the wheel when Ahmadi got out.
That’s when a US drone launched a Hellfire missile at the car. The “secondary explosion” was likely a nearby propane tank.
In all, seven children were killed, 10 civilians total. None were ISIS-Khorasan operatives. None were even suspected terrorists. The military murdered our own allies then crowed about it. Thankfully, the New York Times rooted out the truth.
“We now know that there was no connection between Mr. Ahmadi and ISIS-Khorasan, that his activities on that day were completely harmless and not at all related to the imminent threat we believed we faced, and that Mr. Ahmadi was just as innocent a victim as were the others tragically killed,” Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said in a statement Friday.
“In a dynamic high-threat environment, the commanders on the ground had appropriate authority and had reasonable certainty that the target was valid, but after deeper post-strike analysis, our conclusion is that innocent civilians were killed,” General Milley added. “This is a horrible tragedy of war and it’s heart-wrenching and we are committed to being fully transparent about this incident.”
Now the Biden administration can be “fully transparent,” 17 days after we fled Kabul and the news cycle moved on.
Who knows how many Americans remain stranded in Afghanistan. The Taliban is beheading our allies on the ground. France has withdrawn its ambassadors from Washington after Biden left them in the dark about a new south Pacific strategy. Haitians and thousands of other nationals are pouring through our southern border and the administration has banned media aerial cameras from exposing it. The White House has restricted needed monoclonal Covid treatments from Florida and Texas to punish red-state governors.
Biden’s response was to flee Washington for yet another three-day weekend in Delaware. I hope Rehoboth Beach has good ice cream.
Published in Military, Politics
France is honked off because the new arrangement apparently put the kibosh on a deal where Australia was going to buy 12 French diesel-electric submarines.
Maybe we could buy the subs and give them to the Taliban.
(Yeah, I know they don’t have any ports. Yet.)
But at least there’s no mean tweets.
Joe Biden, and his sycophant’s, as well as the retreads from the Obama administration have been a total disaster. They are not alone. There is White Rage Milley, and then the usual suspects from the media that will protect Joe at all costs.
Joe has done the impossible, he makes a plague of locusts look good, and something that we should welcome.
And, as usual, not one of our armchair “warriors” will apologize or suffer and career setback for this incident. Austin and Milley are as embarrassing as the rest of the Biden administration.
If the Democrats could find a way they’d still give Milley a fifth star.
Norms, baby. Norms.
Undoubtedly, you meant to write paradoxically or inexplicably instead of thankfully. I’m not sure New York Times and truth should appear in the same sentence, except ironically.
Well, at least they’ve got rhythm. Who could ask for anything more?
Have to give credit where it’s due. The NYT’s reporting is the only reason the Pentagon is admitting this. They had hoped the media would play along with the cover-up.
They told me that if I voted for Trump, the US would lose respect around the globe, our European allies would hate us, our diplomacy would devolve into a total clown show, our military would lose all semblance of competence, and our enemies would rejoice.
And by golly, they were right.
Yeah, I corrected the spelling, but I like your comment. As my dad, a former Naval officer told me; It’s all well and good to march to the beat of a different drummer, but it sure [expletive]-up the parade.
A military spokesperson said there were “significant secondary explosions” as a result of the drone hit. Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called it a “righteous strike” that foiled a potential attack.
Great analysis of the images there. Or maybe it was OK but higher ups changed it to fit the narrative.
Not to worry. The Taliban aren’t a real threat to the USA. But one of the worst threats, says DHS, is DVE. Disaster expert Eric Holdeman (“Visit Eric’s Disaster Zone blog, which has become the United States’ most popular blog on the topic of emergency management.”) So it’s time for the US military to pivot to confronting the real threat.
Here’s how Holdeman explains the threats. You know, the people the FBI is running:
The Republican Accountability Project. Got it. DHS under Bush. But oh, no. Not one of those Bushies who had in for Trump. I’d say she was a “patriot” but that’s a red flag for domestic extremism, and she’s right in with the Republican establishment, so she’s not extreme.
We see three apparent characteristics of the modern propagandist lie.
First is inaccurate use of plural v. singular.
Second is the inaccurate use of prepositions. A nearby propane tank would not explode “from the vehicle”.
Third is the possibly the gratuitous adjective “significant” which means nothing when defending the lie if the judge or jury is on your side.
If this occurred on Trump’s watch, the footage would have been leaked and everyone would know the name of the cutest kid killed as well as his made-up puppy.
Gen. Milley would have leaked the video then bragged to Bob Woodward how he saved the country.
When it comes to drone strikes this is hardly man bites dog.
I wonder what the total death toll for innocent people is from the occupation of Afghanistan and the invasion of Iraq. This screw up is just the tip of the iceberg of the last 20 years.
We need to start thinking outside the box about ways to prevent terrorism. Trump once proposed threatening to kill the families of terrorists to prevent them from carrying out their attacks. Sounds pretty brutal, and it is, but it would probably result in orders of magnitude fewer innocents being killed in the long run, because no more terrors attacks means no more invasions, occupations and bombings.
This way of looking at it doesn’t seem to impress conventional politicians. McCain dumped all over Trump for supporting it, however briefly. People like McCain are the problem. To them, if boatloads of innocent people are killed by our forces, it’s all ok as long as it wasn’t intentional. Even threatening to intentionally kill a minuscule fraction of that number is a far worse crime, because it’s intentional. Even though it could save a huge of number of lives. In other words, it’s all about our intentions. It’s about “who we are”. Upholding that image is more important than the huge number of innocent lives we have taken “unintentionally”. It’s all about “honor” and staying on the invite list for all the right cocktail parties. The fact that this philosophical approach would have made it literally impossible to win World War 2 doesn’t seem to matter.
A quote from your link:
About 241,000 people have been killed in the Afghanistan and Pakistan war zone since 2001. More than 71,000 of those killed have been civilians. [Emphasis added]
See my post above.
The deaths of 71,000 innocents is better than merely threatening to kill a few dozen or hundred innocents to stop the whole thing. That’s the John McCain worldview.
No you don’t have to give credit to this mendacious, destructive source of propaganda. A stopped clock may be right twice a day but it’s still broken. Their reasons for reporting this have little, or possibly nothing, to do with the search for truth. Trying to puzzle out the precise reason they chose to write this story is akin to engaging in Kremlinology. The only thing that’s certain is that truth was irrelevant.
I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the cool kids had already decided that Milley was past his expiration date. The drone strike revelation is only a bit more evidence to gin up public outrage.
I have a comment and a question.
Mistakes and misrepresentations are not the same things as lies. A misrepresentation may be honest, negligent, reckless, willfully blind, knowing, or intentional. These are all different.
The question is: Is there evidence that President Biden approves this particular strike?
Do you suppose that this one will win the Pulitzer?
They lied.
But will never be held to account.
Wouldn’t hurt to look at the causes of terrorism as well. If stopping terrorism is what motivates us to invade places like Afghanistan or Iraq.
Roman’s 3:10
Or – perhaps, not that likely, but possible – you have the first stirrings of realizations that this Administration is going to be an utter disaster with a string of conspicuous failures, and it might be wise to separate Biden from the party and the ideology, so the taint doesn’t spread.
If there are any crusty old-school graybeards left in the newsroom, they would push the story because news is news, and because some remnant instinct from the days when they distrusted the government and held the military in contempt would kick in, and because they are in a movie from 1994.
Milley lied, BIPOC children died.
But President Trump, not Gen. Milley or Joe Biden, needs to be permanently exiled from any further possibility of political office by Congress. Yup. Keep up the “principled” opposition.
I have heard the “no mean tweets” meme over and over again. Trump is much more than mean tweets, he operates on the Soviet firehose of falsity premise, that he keeps throwing the kitchen sink at everybody else until they are exhausted, and cannot keep up with his b.s. Or until, like me, people write him off forever. I have written off Trump forever.
In 2020, Trump lost Wisconsin by 20,682 votes. But Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson has pointed out that in 2020 the total number votes for Republican members of the Wisconsin Assembly and State Senate were 50,000 higher than the number of votes for Democrat members of the Wisconsin Assembly and State Senate. Usually, the Presidential candidates have coattails which bring in candidates in lower races. But there were 20,682 plus 50,000 people who voted for Republican members of the Wisconsin legislators, but refused to vote for Trump. Trump has “reverse coattails.” My point is that an inoffensive “generic” Republican Presidential Candidate would have won Wisconsin while Trump loses. Mean, nasty, lying, snarky tweets lose. And Trump lost.
I am 69 years old. I have watched Presidential elections since 1964. I have never ever seen such a massive level of raw visceral hatred towards any candidate like I have seen for people’s reaction to Trump. Hillary got 65,853,514 votes against Trump. Biden got 81,268,924 votes against Trump. That’s 15,415,410 voters who just couldn’t stand to hear one more “mean tweet” or arrogant statement from Trump. I would guess that the only Presidential Candidate who aroused such a level of hatred was Lincoln in the American South in 1860.
As the Pakistani Foreign Legion, of course the Taliban has sea ports, if needed. The Taliban’s principle sea port is Karachi.
OBTW, the U.S. nuclear sub deal is a grotesque subversion of real national/coalition security, involving much more expensive and so fewer submarines with objectively equivalent or less capability. The most stealthy submarines, in the relevant waters, are advanced non-nuclear subs. This really looks like massive extortion by the Chi-com colluding U.S. military industrial complex. IF Australia wants a half-promise of continued carrier group patrols and nuclear umbrella coverage, THEN they must buy a handful of grossly overpriced platinum plated U.S. submarines. Even if largely constructed in Australia, the U.S. corporate chieftains, Democrats all, will get paid on the licensing.
Leftist American corporatist executives will be paid, and American skilled workers will get peanuts, with a handful perhaps getting consulting gigs in Australian shipyards. Plus, this will mean years of delay in deployment, which the Biden family, and the Manchurian General Milley need to meet their CCP objectives.
I’m not up on the whole AUKUS deal. It has Chinese sabers (cutlasses?) rattling, and if we are going to annoy them, then that’s not necessarily a bad thing. On the other hand, it could be a show in order to provide some cover for their asset in the White House. Anyway, some Kiwis are feeling a little left out. It is a little amusing to read that “Trump hurt our feelings by implying that we are freeloaders, even though it is mostly accurate.”