No Andrea Mitchell Biden Could Not Ignore TFG Deal And Stay In Afghanistan

[DanieRains]

TFG already unleashed the Taliban, and pulled out almost all the troops.

Biden could only manage TFG's surrender and withdrawl.

I hate right wing framing by media scum.

[NoMoreRepugs]

1. She is SO past her expiration date.

[2naSalit]

13. +1

[Poiuyt]

43. Exactly

I'm getting tired of her stammering while searching for the word she wants. I mean, I do that too, but I knew when it was time to retire.

[pamdb]

2. andrea

aka Mrs. Greenspan

[GoCubsGo]

3. Trump said the same thing yesterday on Hannity's show.

He flat out said, "Biden could have ignored my deal." So, Mrs. Greenspan is parroting Trump. Fuck her.

[Hugh_Lebowski]

8. I'm sure IQ45 said that, given that like 1 month ago he was bragging at some rally of his

that Biden 'couldn't stop the process', like he was an all-powerful genius and badass.

I've literally seen the video, he goes on and on bragging about it.

Calling IQ45 a pathological liar seriously understates the situation.

[2naSalit]

14. +1

I saw it too, and he did brag about that.

[DallasNE]

26. That Was From A Speech In Ohio

There are serious consequences to breaking a deal because your word is the cement that defines who you are. Losing trust is a serious matter for serious people.

[Ohioboy]

20. So Trump admitted his deal was bad?

That Biden would have been right to ignore his deal?????

That is one twisted way to deflect blame. The sad thing is it will work for him. That kind of skewed logic is accepted by MAGAT everywhere.

[GoCubsGo]

22. Yep, without even a whiff of self-awareness to that fact.

Not surprisingly, Innanity just let it go.

BTW, I don't actually watch Fox. I watch Hal Sparks watching wingnut media, and tearing it apart MST3K style. Last night he did the Trump/Hannity interview. It's all probably up on his YouTube page by now.

[Ohioboy]

23. I've seen Hal Sparks! He is hilarious!

I just happened upon him while I was on youtube one day. His feeds are long, and I've never actually watched one all the way through, but what I have seen, I have enjoyed tremendously.

[Hoyt]

4. Not true. Biden could have delayed, called in a rear guard and air support, blamed trump for

drawing troops down to such a low level that it was impossible to evacuate Americans and Afghans without additional troops, etc.

But, for some reason we ended up with this mess with 2022 elections next year.

[DanieRains]

7. Catch 22

[Calista241]

15. Keeping 10k troops in Afghanistan, a basically under the radar number

is well worth not having 3 months of highly negative news coverage. Hell, the fucking UK just condemned Biden's Afghanistan decision in an emergency session.

[DanieRains]

16. He Would Have To Take The Heat For Re-Deploying And Then The Taliban Would Attack And We Would

And we would need more troops.

It was a perfect trap.

My hat's off to Vladimir.

He is truly a mastermind.

Give him credit.

[Ohioboy]

21. The Taliban had from February 2020 till January 2021 to gain authority and territory under Trump

Did they not use those 11 months to strengthen themselves and broker surrenders? Once they had gained so much, how much more deployment would it have taken just to put things back to where we were, let alone to get out? Maybe cutting our loses was the best route. How much of an escalation beyond what we had been doing would it have taken?

It is my opinion that Afghanistan was another one of Trump's grandiose delusions in which he was the only one who could solve the problem. It was another one of his "deals" that was going to make him a hero. He should have been spending 2020 working on COVID-19 instead of fooling around making deals with the enemy of the Afghan government.

[Hoyt]

27. Of course it was trump's grand delusion. Unfortunately, Biden didn't lay it out like that until

the photos of people falling off the airplane showed up.

Biden should have sent in rearguard troops, blamed the necessity on trump, but he didn't. In fact, now he's sending in troops praying it rectifies the horrible optics.

[DallasNE]

29. Brokered Surrender

That is the part that is being ignored. You can be sure that these surrenders were being kept under wraps too, further complicating the options available to Biden. Afghanistan was stabbing Biden in the back. Et Tu Brutus! A plane was waiting to take him to UAE.

[berni_mccoy]

32. That would have lead to all out war with the Taliban

They would have turned Afghanistan into a worse situation than Iraq was.

[Hoyt]

33. So, just turn the country over to them, tell Americans and Afghans, "sorry, but you'll have to

fight your own way to the airport, hoping to climb into a wheelwell." That'll show em.

[berni_mccoy]

35. It was agreed to by the US State Dept and endorsed by the UN Sec Con

You cannot simply undo these agreements.

[Hoyt]

36. Biden could easily have delayed and blamed it on trump to boot. Biden's hands were not tied.

[berni_mccoy]

39. Just because you keep repeating that doesn't make it true.

[Hoyt]

40. Just because you think Biden had to follow trump's plan, doesn't make it right either.

[wnylib]

41. Biden said that his choices were

to increase troops again or get out. He chose to get out.

I heard an interview from a journalist who had covered Afghanistan since the beginning. He said that, on paper, the Afghan troop level was 300,000, which is the figure that Biden had from US military - a number sufficient to cover the pullout and hold off the Taliban takeover. In reality it was more like 50,000 troops at most, due to internal graft in the Afghan security force, and to early botching of security under Bush.

This journalist (sorry, don't have a name because I didn't hear the beginning of the program), said that Rumsfeld, et.al. made deals with Afghan war lords for forming and leading units to create an Afghan security force. These tribal war lords recruited people for training and their numbers went into the record as trained troops. But the warlords kept for themselves the funds dispersed to them. New soldiers did not get paid. They left. This went on during most of the past 20 years. Very few of the trained people actually remained with the security forces. Meantime, the Taliban had safety in Pakistan to continue operating. Iraqis disillusioned with the US occupation turned to the Taliban.

This journalist faulted US military leaders for not getting out into the more remote tribal regions to see the reality of what was going on. Instead, they met with tribal leaders for progress on training and continued paying them money to disperse that they kept for themselves.

He said that the military who are now verbally attacking Biden and blaming him are covering their own asses for their mistakes in assessing Afghan security force strength. The US military and contractors who worked with them were willing to give good reports on training for years without examining them closely in order to justify their own presence.

I am not a military person. I have no relatives who were in Afghanistan, only in Iraq. I have no way of assessing what this journalist said. There are vets here at DU who would have some idea of the accuracy of the interview.

[Hoyt]

42. Yep, and he's sending in 6,000 additional troops. I don't think Biden is helping himself right now.

[UpInArms]

5. When is Mrs. Alan Greenscum

Going to STFU?

[praxEs]

17. Nail on head

[UpInArms]

46. Welcome to Du, praxEs

Pull up a chair …

Stay awhile

[reality1]

6. she's impossible to watch(and listen to)

[sanatanadharma]

9. By extension, Biden could ignore all other TFG deals

Private profit access to re-opened public lands
Oil leases
Agreements with the Saudi's
All executive orders

What else, by simple fiat?

[Polly Hennessey]

10. I watched her and the blonde reporter for about one minute.

Blame Biden for everything - then, now, and forever. Believe reporter said she was there or knew someone who was there, so, of course, she has all the answers. Funny thing is she has no solutions. On a slightly different subject: I did like Mrs. Greenspan’s pink suit.

[pwb]

11. Truth is being revealed and they will pay for their instigation.

I may never watch cable news again. On my fourth day now of just streaming and D.U. I discovered a very nice P.B.S. FM radio station that will please most music listeners. Life without cables continuous thoughts and opinions is good.

[Mike Nelson]

12. Andrea...

... should find another job. Maybe she can team-up with Joe & Mika and start a new Facebook group for Twitter fans and Hillary Email complainers.

[True Blue American]

25. Joe said this morning

That Biden was doing what most Americans want after flooding the waves for 5 days ranting.

[WinstonSmith4740]

18. I had to turn it off.

She and Chuck Todd get me reaching for the remote almost every time.

[Johonny]

19. Basically Biden could have escalated the war yet again

Something he didn't want to do in 2009 so why are we surprised he didn't do it in 2021. What would the be the result of such a move besides more $ burned, more troops dead, and a shit show collapse of the country sometime in the future?

[sarisataka]

24. Yes he could have

If he wanted to.

[DanieRains]

28. America Loses Either Way We Surge Taliban Attacks Carnage All Joe Biden's Fault

We don't surge, Taliban takes over, all Joe Biden's fault.

What a beautiful trap.

Biden said we're leaving, let's leave.

Taliban by the way is not shooting at us for now, which is good.

Joe had a poker hand of a 3 and no cards coming when TFG left office.

No help with transition.

During transition I am sure the Taliban lined up more surrenders.

Putin and Trump set a beautiful trap.

No (non) pile of media scum will simply say it.

Republicans win, America and freedom/democracy supporters lose.

Same old song and dance.

[sarisataka]

37. So just for the sake of speculation

What was the plan if Trump won the election?

He would have been caught in his own trap

[TheRickles]

30. An important story, but a little punctuation goes a long way.

As in: No, Andrea Mitchell. Biden could not ignore TFG deal and stay in Afghanistan.

[kairos12]

31. She is a stumbling, mumbling moron.

Unwatchable.

[SunSeeker]

34. I cannot stand Andrea "But Her Emails" Mitchell.

She helped give us Trump.

[Corgigal]

38. Well,

it’s not like she personally would have anyone in the line of fire. However, she might have had some of her stock value slip a bit. Priorities.

[tavernier]

45. She is literally the Anti-me.

We share a birthday, both day and year, but we are polar opposites. She is a smarmy old bat who needs to eat a sandwich, and I am an attractive voluptuous woman of a certain age with a much better political compass.