We don’t normally pay much attention to claims made by the former president, as he mostly just riffs golden oldies. But this is a new claim.
A version of this claim also circulates widely on right-leaning social
media — that somehow the Taliban has ended up with $83 billion in U.S. weaponry. (Trump, as usual, rounds the number up.)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/08/31/no-taliban-did-not-seize-83-billion-us-weapons/
The $83 billion number is not invented out of whole cloth. But it reflects all the money spent to train, equip and house the Afghan military and
police — so weapons are just a part of that. At this point, no one really knows the value of the equipment that was seized by the Taliban.
The Facts
The $83 billion figure — technically, $82.9 billion — comes from an estimate in the July 30 quarterly report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) for all spending on the Afghanistan Security Forces Fund since the U.S. invasion in 2001.
In recent years, the spending has decreased. For fiscal 2021, about $3 billion was spent on security forces, which was similar to 2020.
Separately, the U.S. government spent about $36 billion on shoring up the Afghan government. The total bill for the Afghan project added up to more than $144 billion.
In any case, the $83 billion spent on the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) goes back two decades, including almost $19
billion spent between 2002 and 2009.
A 2017 Government Accountability Office report estimated that about 29 percent of the funds spent on the Afghan security forces between 2005 and 2016 went to equipment and transportation. (The transportation costs
related to transporting equipment and for contracted pilots and airplanes for transporting officials to meetings. There appears to be no way to segregate transportation spending.)
Using that same percentage, applied against $83 billion spent in total on Afghan security forces. that would mean the equipment provided to Afghan forces amounted to roughly $24 billion over 20 years. The GAO said approximately 70 percent of the equipment went to the Afghan military and the rest went to the national police (part of the Interior Ministry).
That’s certainly a lot of money. Between 2005 and 2016, U.S. taxpayers paid for 76,000 vehicles (such as 43,000 Ford Ranger pickup trucks, 22,000 Humvees and 900 mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles known as MRAPs), 600,000 weapons and more than 200 aircraft, according to GAO.
Of course, some of this equipment may be obsolete or destroyed — or soon may not be usable.
The SIGAR report shows that 167 aircraft out of an inventory of 211 were usable — but the Afghan Air Force (AAF) still lacked enough qualified pilots. One issue was that the Taliban targeted pilots for assassination.
Even more problematic, there were not enough maintenance crews to maintain the aircraft. “Without continued contractor support, none of the AAF’s airframes can be sustained as combat effective for more than a few months, depending on the stock of equipment parts in-country, the maintenance capability on each airframe, and the timing of contractor support withdrawal,” the report said.
With great fanfare, the Taliban has seized a number of Black Hawk helicopters, including ones that the United States had just shipped this year at the request of former Afghan president Ashraf Ghani. But only the first crew of Black Hawk mechanics had been trained, so the military “can field no more than one UH-60 per night for helicopter missions,” SIGAR said.
Meanwhile, as the U.S. military wound down its mission, it turned over facilities and equipment to the Afghan security forces — which may have added to the total seized by the Taliban. But Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie
Jr., head of U.S. Central Command, said that before leaving Kabul airport
on Aug. 30, the military “demilitarized” 70 MRAPs, 27 Humvees and 73 aircraft. “Those aircraft will never fly again,” he said. “They’ll never
be able to be operated by anyone.” (Demilitarized is a term that means damaging in place, sometimes with explosives.)
“No one has any accounting of exactly what survived the last weeks of the collapse and fell into Taliban hands, and even before the collapse, SIGAR had publicly reported no accounting was possible in many districts,” said Anthony H. Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International
Studies. “In rough terms, however, if the ANDSF could not sustain it without foreign contractors, the Taliban will have very serious problems
in operating it. That covers most aircraft and many electronics and
heavier weapons.”
“One also has to be careful here,” Cordesman added. “The fact that Taliban
fighters or cells of fighters get U.S. equipment does not mean it is
pooled or shared. Factionalism and hoarding are the rule in Afghanistan,
not the exception.”
The Pinocchio Test
U.S. military equipment was given to Afghan security forces over two decades. Tanks, vehicles, helicopters and other gear fell into the hands
of the Taliban when the U.S.-trained force quickly collapsed. The value of these assets is unclear, but if the Taliban is unable to obtain spare
parts, it may not be able to maintain them.
But the value of the equipment is not more than $80 billion. That’s the figure for all of the money spent on training and sustaining the Afghan military over 20 years. The equipment portion of that total is about $24 billion — certainly not small change — but the actual value of the equipment in the Taliban’s hands is probably much less than even that amount.
### - well there's the real truth of the matter starting to emerge?
the LIES and distortions/inflations always spreading very quickly,
grabbing & twisting the headlines with the truth always lagging behind by several days, the hysterics and the emotionally unstable among us being
the first victims of any such news-frenzy, used, as they usually are, in a blatant effort to deliberately manipulate public opinion, in this instance against biden by a right-wing currently hanging around just waiting for
him to drop so much as a pin so they can immediately make some big public deal of it, duh + talk about grasping at straws?
why people are always so very gullible being the only real question here?
but then am guessing this is precisely what happens when 'belief' is deliberately encouraged over 'fact' and illusion over reality, and because people who don't know what they're doing' are far, far easier to
manipulate, so it's KEPT that way!
matey here the other day saying: that the only way to get OUT of a 'cult'
is to STOP believing in it??
well that's absolutely correct!
but how exactly is someone supposed to DO that when the very society
itself they were raised in is selling everyone a whole bunch of lies from the cradle to the grave?
how to escape from a cult sooo big and sooo vast that it encompasses every single aspect of people's lives?? (the very definition OF a cult ffs!)
can ya just stop 'believing' in it?
will that make it all go away??
i mean, where do ya go to get away from it when that cult is literally... everywhere???
when it controls... everything!
an 'enlightened' society presumably wouldn't function like that though...
things would be very... different
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHXRvfMMgBk
imagine that ;)
On Wednesday, September 1, 2021 at 8:03:35 PM UTC-4, slider wrote:physically insipid, oversocialized, and undertested, devoid of purpose and even individual character. In my capacity as a freelance cultural entomologist, I previously analyzed the figure here. Comparable to the Nietzschean Last Man, we can think of him as a debased, shriveled puppet of the neoliberal elite.
We don’t normally pay much attention to claims made by the former
president, as he mostly just riffs golden oldies. But this is a new claim. >> A version of this claim also circulates widely on right-leaning social
media — that somehow the Taliban has ended up with $83 billion in U.S.
weaponry. (Trump, as usual, rounds the number up.)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/08/31/no-taliban-did-not-seize-83-billion-us-weapons/
The $83 billion number is not invented out of whole cloth. But it reflects >> all the money spent to train, equip and house the Afghan military and
police — so weapons are just a part of that. At this point, no one really >> knows the value of the equipment that was seized by the Taliban.
The Facts
The $83 billion figure — technically, $82.9 billion — comes from an
estimate in the July 30 quarterly report by the Special Inspector General
for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) for all spending on the Afghanistan >> Security Forces Fund since the U.S. invasion in 2001.
In recent years, the spending has decreased. For fiscal 2021, about $3
billion was spent on security forces, which was similar to 2020.
Separately, the U.S. government spent about $36 billion on shoring up the
Afghan government. The total bill for the Afghan project added up to more
than $144 billion.
In any case, the $83 billion spent on the Afghan National Defense and
Security Forces (ANDSF) goes back two decades, including almost $19
billion spent between 2002 and 2009.
A 2017 Government Accountability Office report estimated that about 29
percent of the funds spent on the Afghan security forces between 2005 and
2016 went to equipment and transportation. (The transportation costs
related to transporting equipment and for contracted pilots and airplanes
for transporting officials to meetings. There appears to be no way to
segregate transportation spending.)
Using that same percentage, applied against $83 billion spent in total on
Afghan security forces. that would mean the equipment provided to Afghan
forces amounted to roughly $24 billion over 20 years. The GAO said
approximately 70 percent of the equipment went to the Afghan military and
the rest went to the national police (part of the Interior Ministry).
That’s certainly a lot of money. Between 2005 and 2016, U.S. taxpayers
paid for 76,000 vehicles (such as 43,000 Ford Ranger pickup trucks, 22,000 >> Humvees and 900 mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles known as MRAPs),
600,000 weapons and more than 200 aircraft, according to GAO.
Of course, some of this equipment may be obsolete or destroyed — or soon >> may not be usable.
The SIGAR report shows that 167 aircraft out of an inventory of 211 were
usable — but the Afghan Air Force (AAF) still lacked enough qualified
pilots. One issue was that the Taliban targeted pilots for assassination.
Even more problematic, there were not enough maintenance crews to maintain >> the aircraft. “Without continued contractor support, none of the AAF’s >> airframes can be sustained as combat effective for more than a few months, >> depending on the stock of equipment parts in-country, the maintenance
capability on each airframe, and the timing of contractor support
withdrawal,” the report said.
With great fanfare, the Taliban has seized a number of Black Hawk
helicopters, including ones that the United States had just shipped this
year at the request of former Afghan president Ashraf Ghani. But only the
first crew of Black Hawk mechanics had been trained, so the military “can >> field no more than one UH-60 per night for helicopter missions,” SIGAR
said.
Meanwhile, as the U.S. military wound down its mission, it turned over
facilities and equipment to the Afghan security forces — which may have
added to the total seized by the Taliban. But Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie
Jr., head of U.S. Central Command, said that before leaving Kabul airport
on Aug. 30, the military “demilitarized” 70 MRAPs, 27 Humvees and 73
aircraft. “Those aircraft will never fly again,” he said. “They’ll never
be able to be operated by anyone.” (Demilitarized is a term that means
damaging in place, sometimes with explosives.)
“No one has any accounting of exactly what survived the last weeks of the >> collapse and fell into Taliban hands, and even before the collapse, SIGAR
had publicly reported no accounting was possible in many districts,” said >> Anthony H. Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International
Studies. “In rough terms, however, if the ANDSF could not sustain it
without foreign contractors, the Taliban will have very serious problems
in operating it. That covers most aircraft and many electronics and
heavier weapons.”
“One also has to be careful here,” Cordesman added. “The fact that Taliban
fighters or cells of fighters get U.S. equipment does not mean it is
pooled or shared. Factionalism and hoarding are the rule in Afghanistan,
not the exception.”
The Pinocchio Test
U.S. military equipment was given to Afghan security forces over two
decades. Tanks, vehicles, helicopters and other gear fell into the hands
of the Taliban when the U.S.-trained force quickly collapsed. The value of >> these assets is unclear, but if the Taliban is unable to obtain spare
parts, it may not be able to maintain them.
But the value of the equipment is not more than $80 billion. That’s the
figure for all of the money spent on training and sustaining the Afghan
military over 20 years. The equipment portion of that total is about $24
billion — certainly not small change — but the actual value of the
equipment in the Taliban’s hands is probably much less than even that
amount.
### - well there's the real truth of the matter starting to emerge?
the LIES and distortions/inflations always spreading very quickly,
grabbing & twisting the headlines with the truth always lagging behind by
several days, the hysterics and the emotionally unstable among us being
the first victims of any such news-frenzy, used, as they usually are, in a >> blatant effort to deliberately manipulate public opinion, in this instance >> against biden by a right-wing currently hanging around just waiting for
him to drop so much as a pin so they can immediately make some big public
deal of it, duh + talk about grasping at straws?
why people are always so very gullible being the only real question here?
but then am guessing this is precisely what happens when 'belief' is
deliberately encouraged over 'fact' and illusion over reality, and because >> people who don't know what they're doing' are far, far easier to
manipulate, so it's KEPT that way!
matey here the other day saying: that the only way to get OUT of a 'cult'
is to STOP believing in it??
well that's absolutely correct!
but how exactly is someone supposed to DO that when the very society
itself they were raised in is selling everyone a whole bunch of lies from
the cradle to the grave?
how to escape from a cult sooo big and sooo vast that it encompasses every >> single aspect of people's lives?? (the very definition OF a cult ffs!)
can ya just stop 'believing' in it?
will that make it all go away??
i mean, where do ya go to get away from it when that cult is literally...
everywhere???
when it controls... everything!
an 'enlightened' society presumably wouldn't function like that though...
things would be very... different
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHXRvfMMgBk
imagine that ;)
Any idiot knows, if you can't fix it, it ain't gonna run for long.
Here's a good piece about your four years in the "Orange Man Hitler" cult. >You don't throw psychotic fits for four years and walk away Brian.
ORANGE MAN HITLER - Deprogramming session 001
In recent years Western society has given rise to the proliferation of a novel subspecies sometimes referred to as the bugman. The microcosm of the intellectually and morally decaying contemporary technological dystopia, this bugman is mentally and
As a result of the Covid agenda, however, the bugman has mutated into something almost unrecognizable. His familiar open-mouthed smile has been muzzled by white polypropylene and the childish glee in his eyes replaced with a look of unpreparedapprehension. His life is now defined by an omnipresent feeling of dread that has
The new software update includes a brain augmentation which more deeply intertwines the bugman’s synapses with the media industrial machine. What we previously called the ‘small-souled’ bugman — the term is borrowed from the Aristotelian idea ofbeing small in mind and spirit — is now almost extinct, outcompeted by the new bugman
Plugged into the feed of social media-generated news, the bugman had initially been alarmed by ominous clips showing a plague wreaking havoc in China. At first his instinctive fears were soothed when trusted sources brushed off the threat and stressedthe greater threat of racism. Soon enough, however, these same sources changed their tune and cranked the bugman’s panic levels to eleven, where they have remained ever since. Facing the most extensive and pervasive psychological campaign in human history he hunkered down at home to help flatten the curve. Lockdowns weren’t so
As some began to recognize the virus itself was not the biggest problem, the bugman entertained himself with pure escapism. In an astonishing twist, he cheered as schools were closed, business owners had their lives destroyed, and mask compliance becametotal. A surveillance tech fanatic, the fear-addled bugman welcomed the announcements that the new technocratic order was intending to impose an all-consuming social credit score. Whatever keeps us safe, he said, whatever keeps us safe…
In retrospect, the mask is what the bugman always craved. It is a great equalizer, subduing those with individual identity and character into the faceless drone collective. This is where the bugman feels most at ease, unthreatened by any flicker ofsuperiority, in an empty sea of sameness and monotony, the machination of humanity
Later entering the vaccination phase, the bugman dismissed any extremist skepticism of the manufacturers’ intentions as the gene therapies were rushed through regulatory checks and into mass production. He tweeted the obligatory selfie donning his “I’m vaccinated!” sticker — another proud and happy customer. At first agreeing that
Demands to “get vaccinated before it’s too late!” and assertions that “we’ve always had vaccine passports” filled the bugman’s timeline as governments stripped away rights and the new normal industry ballooned into a trillion-dollar cashcow. This is perhaps the most abject thing about the fear-addled bugman. He has willingly made
Most strikingly, the bugman seems to be incapable of either seeing or acknowledging the vast contradictions and inconsistencies in the crumbling narrative. He seems unable or unwilling to make even the most obvious connections, interpret the most basicdata, or form arguments of substance. Does he actually believe the bizarre official story or is he playing a sick political trick? He will tell you repeatedly that you are, quite simply, just plain stupid. The whole thing is so strange that we cannot rule out the possibility of it all being an elaborate revenge fantasy.
The psychology of the fear-addled bugman is remarkably easy to generalize. He is soft in the center, the result of a coddled upbringing that was too safe and too easy, rendering him incapable of facing the slightest adversity. School has taught him torespect the claim of science as a self-correcting method, and a new cult of lab coat-wearing preachers led by an Italian-American Pope appealed to his perverse religious impulses. He believes it is blasphemous to question how it is that being baptized with a jab “protects others,” or how a polyester face mask keeps out
The bugman often felt anxiety before the roll-out of the pandemic due to his inability to exert control. Now the impudent resistance — even breezy nonchalance — of the disobedient and non-compliant provokes extraordinary rage. He does not fullygrasp why they have not submitted, like he has. He finds it hard to imagine a being who
Of course the bugman, like all champagne socialists, never did really care about ‘equality’. That was always just a strategy for political power, which was useful at the time. But the new normal has made possible a whole new level of retributionagainst the strong. The fear-addled bugman has made an important contribution to the
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