Throughout the night and today U.S. personnel were evacuated from the embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan.  The U.S. flag has been removed.  The airport in Kabul is no longer safe and flights have been suspended.  Afghanistan President Ghani has fled the country.  The Taliban are on the streets of Kabul as fighting around the airport continues.

U.S. Secretary of State Tony Blinken is a stuttering and stammering mess as he appears on television attempting to obfuscate the complete FUBAR that is unfolding.  Joe Biden is being kept hidden in his bunker.  U.S. personnel who did not make it to the airport have been told to shelter in place and await rescue.  Some reports of negotiations with Taliban leadership for safe passage for Americans.  The embassy is being abandoned.

Why the rapid collapse? “In the wake of President Biden’s withdrawal decision, the U.S. pulled its air support, intelligence and contractors servicing Afghanistan’s planes and helicopters. That meant the Afghan military simply couldn’t operate anymore. The same happened with another failed American effort, the South Vietnamese army in the 1970s, said retired Lt. Gen. Daniel Bolger, who commanded the U.S.-led coalition’s mission to train Afghan forces in 2011-2013.” (WSJ link)

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In July, Biden said Kabul would never fall.  Four days ago Biden said it would take more than 90 days for Taliban to reach Kabul, if at all.  Today, Biden sends 1,000 more additional troops to Kabul as it is expected to fall within 72 hrs.   That is correct.  By Monday the Taliban could control all of Afghanistan.

The AP is reporting that emergency evacuations have sped up the timeline to avoid the most embarrassing optics for the Biden administration.  An additional 1,000 troops from the 82nd Airborne are en-route to support the previously announced 3,000 U.S. troops handling the evacuation.  That is a total of 4,000 new military troops sent to Kabul to support the previous 1,000.  Keep in mind the original Afghan withdrawal was 2,500 troops in total.

(VIA AP) – The Latest developments on Afghanistan, where a weeklong Taliban offensive is now approaching the outskirts of the capital, Kabul, after the insurgents captured most of the north, west and south of the country, just weeks ahead of the final pullout of all U.S. and NATO troops:  “WASHINGTON — A defense official says President Joe Biden has authorized an additional 1,000 U.S. troops for deployment to Afghanistan.

That raises to roughly 5,000 the number of U.S. troops to ensure what Biden calls an “orderly and safe drawdown” of American and allied personnel. U.S. troops will also help evacuate Afghans who worked with the military during the nearly two-decade war.

The Pentagon said earlier that 3,000 troops are being sent to Kabul to join the nearly 1,000 already there. Biden’s statement on Saturday didn’t explain the breakdown of the 5,000 troops he said had been deployed.

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The Taliban in Afghanistan have been taking back territory and attacking U.S. allied forces ever since the U.S. military began a withdrawal. On July 8th Joe Biden was asked if the U.S. embassy in Kabul would be evacuated giving a familiar reference to the U.S. collapse in Vietnam.  In July he said no.  Biden was leaving 650 military personnel in Kabul to guard the embassy and diplomats.

Two days ago Biden announced sending 3,000 U.S. troops to begin the embassy evacuation. That is correct.  Biden is sending 3,000 soldiers back to Afghanistan to help evacuate Americans. Another 3,500 soldiers will be on standby. Biden is sending more soldiers back to Afghanistan than the 2,500 he withdrew to begin with.

Considering that Joe Biden has a documented political history of getting everything exactly wrong; meaning the outcomes are exactly the opposite of every contention he has ever made; it is worth noting what Biden claims will not happen – because this is exactly what is likely to happen.  WATCH:

As if on cue from divine or karmic providence, exactly what Joe Biden said in July would not occur, is exactly what is occurring in August….  Afghanistan’s second and third largest cities, Kandahar and Herat, fell to the Taliban on Thursday and Friday.

(CNN) – […] In a statement Friday, the Taliban said they had taken control of the governor’s office, police headquarters, as well as other key operational centers throughout the city of Kandahar. “Hundreds of weapons, vehicles and ammunition were seized,” the Taliban statement said.

Kamin said he and many others had made their way to a military base close to the city’s international airport and were awaiting a flight out. “Many (government) soldiers surrendered and the rest fled,” Kamin said.

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Stop me when you have heard this before.  The Boulder, Colorado, shooter was named as 21-year-old Ahmad al-Aliwi Alissa earlier today.  An then this gem from the New York Times:

(New York Times) “The suspect’s identity was known to the F.B.I. because he was linked to another individual under investigation by the bureau, according to law enforcement officials.” (link)

A reminder…. 50 FBI agents were enlisted within the Trump-Russia investigation to push a narrative. 13 FBI agents were dispatched to Talladega speedway to investigate a garage pull-down rope and push a narrative.  Thousands of FBI hours have been spent investigating the January 6th Washington DC protest… and once again another terrorist carries out a mass shooting where the FBI knew the suspect in advance.

The FBI knew in advance the Pulse Nightclub shooter (Omar Mateen) and were tipped off by the local sheriff.  The FBI knew in advance the San Bernardino Terrorists (Tashfeen Malik). The FBI knew in advance the Boston Marathon Bombers (the Tsarnaev brothers) tipped off by Russians.  The FBI knew in advance the Garland, Texas, shooters (Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi).  The FBI knew in advance of the Parkland High School shooter (Nikolas Cruz). The FBI knew in advance of the Fort Hood shooter (Nidal Hasan); and now the FBI knew in advance of Ahmad al-Aliwi Alissa.

Those are just off-the-top of my head…  Anyone notice a pattern?

Meanwhile the political FBI agents chase the ghosts of mysteriously invisible white supremacists conducting random acts of unidentified racism.

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In case you might have missed the latest faux-controversy assigned by political operatives to the media narrative engineers, the issue surrounds leaked sketchy intelligence reports, to the New York Times, claiming Russians were willing to pay Taliban members to kill U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan.  The evidence provided by the Times includes:

(New York Times Graphic Source)

From this tenuous evidence footnoted with “according to multiple officials familiar with the intelligence”, democrat operatives in media desperately clutch their pearls and stake out another batch of apoplexy claiming President Trump is not doing anything about it.

Setting aside for the moment that nothing claimed by media or the DNC political operatives in/around capitol hill has any substantive intelligence to prove the claim, let’s first look at the underlying premise: ‘Russians are paying the Taliban to kill American soldiers.’

First, obviously these same voices need to ignore that in 2010 Iran was paying insurgent fighters in multiple fields of combat including Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria, to kill Americans. Those well-documented examples must be overlooked because despite the overwhelming evidence the Obama administration paid Iran over $170 billion in cash and entered a nuclear deal with them.  Once again, in order to retain their left-wing political position the media must pretend not to know things.

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Shaun King is a well known Black Lives Matter con artist who has grifted on racial grievance for a decade even lying about his own family and race.  Shaun King is white, provably white, and he found his professional & financial niche by conning black people, including Oprah Winfrey, into believing he is black.  [Shaun King]

After spending several years drumming up racial division King attached himself to the very first well publicized BLM effort in Ferguson Missouri. There was a lot of money to be made selling the completely false Mike Brown story; so Shaun King hooked up with DeRay McKesson to create the new financial conduit known as Black Lives Matter. His scams and cons are very well known to long-term CTH readers.

Together McKesson and King sell a toxic stew of Marxism, racism, and hatred; and as a consequence their business model intersects with Islamic extremism.  As we noted earlier there is a lot of similarity between 2010’s Islamist Spring and 2020’s BLM protests.  Here’s the latest example courtesy of the lying, liar who lies for a living:

Under the ideology of Black Lives Matter Islam is the dominant and preferred religion; Christianity is viewed as against their interests. The reason is simple, the doctrines of Islam are political, the doctrines of the BLM movement are identically political.

Within the overall U.S. movement Antifa is essentially white ISIS and the Black Lives Matter crowd are racial grievance activists funded by coastal liberals and Marxists.

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An interesting new discovery amid revelations into the background motives of President Obama to weaponize the intelligence apparatus against his political opposition.

Today former Trump campaign foreign policy advisor Walid Phares identified himself as the fifth target in the August 2, 2017, Rosenstein scope memo.  [The redacted section above] With this admission/discovery a more interesting background makes sense.

(Via John Solomon) […] Phares is speaking out for the first time, suggesting that one of the motives of those who made the allegations and sustained the investigation was to hamper the early Trump presidency’s foreign policy goals, including the 45th president’s long-promised plan to cancel the Obama-era Iran nuclear deal.

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This is a little lengthy of a discussion, but it touches upon something very relevant to this election cycle.  Author Diana West discusses a network and pattern of ideology within the modern pentagon leadership, and how a worldview is threatened by President Trump. The interview and discussion is below.

The conversation necessarily gets in the weeds and is filled with unique insight into a very complex alignment. However, in the big picture it’s not difficult to figure out why the Pentagon would be opposed to Trump.  During the campaign and early administration President Trump’s expressed foreign policy was viewed by NATO alliance members as a threat.  The same type of perspective applies internally to the U.S. military.

President Trump’s preferred use of economic warfare makes the Pentagon’s role diminished. Instead of punching North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, President Trump hits the checkbook of Chinese Chairman Xi Jinping.  The primary has become the contingency. The value of James Mattis replaced by the effectiveness of Robert Lighthizer.  JC Milley isn’t in the planning room; Milley’s been replaced by Wilbur Ross (until he’s needed).

In the Trump era the President is telling the Pentagon where and when to position; and asks them for ‘contingency’ preparation.  Decades of Pentagon-centric foreign policy is lessened by an entirely new geopolitical approach based on economic strategy.

Take away power, or worse yet, stop using military power, and the leaders within the system start to sense their institution becoming functionally obsolescent.  Overlay this military view upon pre-existing ideological differences and the situation gets worse.

CTH touched on this last year when we noted how the Pentagon, specifically the joint chiefs, never took any action when Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman positioned himself as an opponent to President Trump’s policy perspective.  The pentagon left Vindman on assignment to the NSC even after Vindman attempted to take-down President Trump.

Another example was Joint Chief Chairman Milley, and the visit Pompeo and Milley took to Mar-a-Lago in December, where they were informing President Trump of military strikes in Syria and Iraq *after* they took place. [Background Here] [Background Here].

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In a display of public unity with ‘The Movement’ writ large, FBI officials took a knee to declare their woke allegiance with the protesting mobs.  With that visible display we now have a better understanding of the motives behind a history of FBI failures.

Setting aside the optic that some members of the FBI looking more like ‘meal-team-6’, there was always a suspicion the FBI were more concerned about political correctness than actually doing the work of a federal investigative agency.  Historically the FBI has failed miserably to stop domestic terror threats; and when the investigative failures are researched there’s usually a prior connection between the attackers and the FBI.

The father of the Orlando Pulse nightclub terrorist, Omar Mateen, was a guy named Seddique Mateen (you might remember seeing him at the Hillary Clinton rally).  After Omar killed 49 people it was discovered that Seddique had been an FBI informant for over eleven years (2005 to 2016).

Similarly, after the Parkland school shooting, it was discovered the FBI was fully aware of Nikolas Cruz, yet again they had taken no action.  The exact same scenario had played out several years earlier when the FBI was warned about the Tsarnaev brothers before the Boston Marathon Bombing 2013 and yet they did nothing to stop it.

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Today in Minneapolis was the first of three funerals for George Floyd in three states.  The next funeral will be held in North Carolina on Saturday; then the grievance tour travels to Texas for a full day viewing on Monday, and final funeral on Tuesday.

What media will not discuss is the lack of visible support across social media on the first day of the five official days of public mourning.  Perhaps the BLM and AME network have overplayed their hand; and/or, people are burned-out over the continued use of the race card.  It also did not help that Al Sharpton played the lead role for funeral one.

Now, considering the amount of media coverage, what I just wrote might sound odd; but I’m not looking at media… I’m looking at the national audience response to the overblown media coverage.  There is a big difference and a massive disconnect.

The media are hyping the five days of national mourning and live broadcasting the funerals and events.  However, the downstream reception rate appears very poor.

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