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Pentagon leaders testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday on the Afghanistan withdrawal, and two top generals said they thought the US should not have left the country.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley said he believed the US should have kept 2,500 troops in Afghanistan to prevent a collapse of the US-backed government, although he did not say what advice he gave directly to President Biden.
Gen. Frank McKenzie, the head of US Central Command, agreed with Milley and said back in the Fall of 2020, he recommended to the Trump administration that the US should have left 4,500 troops in Afghanistan.
When President Biden came into office in January, there were only 2,500 US troops in Afghanistan. The US was only able to keep this small number of forces in the country because the Taliban was not attacking foreign troops under the Doha agreement that was signed in February 2020.
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President Joe Biden began his presidency with a promise to confront Saudi Arabia and treat the murderous regime as a "pariah." In particular, he pledged to end "all American support for offensive operations in the war in Yemen, including relevant arms sales."
Yet nearly eight months later little has changed. The president undercut his initial promise when he said "We’re going to continue to support and help Saudi Arabia defend its sovereignty and its territorial integrity and its people."
The reason Houthi insurgents battling for control of Yemen are attacking the Kingdom is because it continues offensive operations - after spending more than six years slaughtering Yemenis with attacks on weddings, funerals, school buses, apartments, and myriad other civilian targets. Even worse may be the Saudi blockade of Yemen.
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On Thursday, the House passed an amendment for its version of the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would end all US support for the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen. The measure passed by a slim margin in a vote of 219 to 207.
The amendment, sponsored by Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), would terminate "US military logistical support, and the transfer of spare parts to Saudi warplanes conducting aerial strikes against the Houthis in Yemen and permanently ends intelligence sharing that enables offensive strikes and any US effort to command, coordinate, participate in the movement of, or accompany Saudi or United Arab Emirates-led coalition forces in the war in Yemen."
For the amendment to become law, it would have to be on the final version of the NDAA, which will be negotiated between the House and Senate in conference committee.
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Biden made the claim that America is neither "seeking a new Cold War" nor trying to divide the world up "into rigid blocks." He then made at least seven statements that refuted that claim.
He referred to the US as a hegemon, or at least a superpower, when he referred to "the commitment of my new administration to help lead the world." His very next statement was that the US is "fixing our eyes" on the key challenges of the future, including "managing the shifts in global power dynamics." "Managing" is a euphemism, and "shifts in global power dynamics" is an allusion to China. The two combined equal the very Cold War that Biden denies he is seeking.
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Michael Isikoff is at it again - this time with co-authors Zack Dorfan, and Sean Naylor - in a long, pot-holed piece posted Sunday on Yahoo where Isikoff is "chief investigative correspondent." Seeing the title, wouldn’t you dip in? "Kidnapping, assassination and a London shoot-out: Inside the CIA's secret war plans against WikiLeaks."
I sent a quick tweet to alert those many readers, who are malnourished by the corporate media, to the subliminal but clear subtext; the Big Lie that Assange was a Russian agent. (After all, he published DNC emails "hacked by the Russians" to hurt candidate Clinton and throw the 2016 election to Trump. Right? "Hacked"? = Wrong.)
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Following the Taliban's victory over the US military, US corporate media has churned out a new narrative about the imminent threat of terrorism from Afghanistan that sets the stage for future military interventions. Blasted out in a stunningly disciplined fashion, the media has demonstrated as clearly as ever its coordination with the national security state and advancements of its interests.
The corporate media coverage in the the weeks following the Taliban entry into Kabul conveyed two overriding political messages: first, that the Taliban victory had brought to power the Haqqani network, which is said to be even more violent than the Taliban and even closer to al Qaeda; and second, that the the danger of terrorism had now become much more serious, because the Taliban had could not be counted on to prevent al Qaeda from planning terrorist attack.
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