Tag Archives: Taliban

International news

Why hasn’t Trump responded with outrage?

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I now will clear the air:  I believe that Russia paid bounties to Taliban fighters who killed American troops on the battlefield in Afghanistan.

Moreover, I also believe the essence of those reports has been established by thorough media investigations. The question remains, though, about what Donald Trump knew and when he knew it.

If the worst case is true, that Trump knew of the bounties being paid and did nothing, then we have a series crisis on our hands. We have a president who has fundamentally violated his oath as commander in chief by refusing to protect the men and women he sends into harm’s way. To be fair, the worst case hasn’t been established.

There really is no “best case,” given what I believe we know … that the Russians placed bounties on the heads of our service personnel.

What if Trump didn’t get the briefing? What if it landed on his desk but he didn’t open up the folder to read its contents?

That all is on the table now for discussion and further inquiry.

Here’s my question of the day: Given that the president now knows what the world knows, that the Russian intelligence network paid money for our service personnel’s lives, why in the name of all that is sacred has he not raised holy hell with Vladimir Putin?

Why does our president remain stone-cold silent on the deed that many of us believe occurred?

Instead, he talks with Putin on the phone. He yaps about getting Russia installed as a member of the G7 coalition of leading industrialized nations — over the objections of the other members. He doesn’t seem to accept the notion that Russia is a third- or maybe fourth-rate economic power and doesn’t qualify as a player among the leading industrialized nations.

This story isn’t going anywhere any time soon. If I were to venture a guess I am willing to suggest that it likely won’t end well for Donald Trump.

We need answers. Right now!

International news, military news

Where is the next Howard Baker?

U.S. Sen. Howard Baker asked what has become the centerpiece  question of the Senate Watergate hearings of 1973: What did the president know and when did he know it? 

The late great Tennessee Republican sought to get to the root of what President Nixon knew of the Watergate break-in at the Democratic National Committee office and whether he sought to cover it up.

Sen. Baker’s legacy comes to mind as the nation ponders whether Donald J. Trump received a briefing about a hostile power offering to pay bounties on the deaths of American service personnel.

In other words, what did the president know and when did he know it?

The New York Times initially reported that intelligence officers had the information. Trump, as is his style, denigrated the Times reporting, calling it “fake news.” Then came more reporting from the Wall Street Journal, from The Associated Press that Trump received briefings in written form.

Trump says he never was briefed. Oh, but the AP reports that John Bolton, the former national security adviser, told Trump — to his face — about the intelligence he had received as early as March 2019.

Trump says he didn’t know about it. Others offer much different pictures of what he knew and when he knew it.

As has been mentioned before on this blog, Trump’s credibility on every issue on Earth is suspect. He cannot tell the truth. He is unwilling or unable to speak truthfully … about anything. Thus, I am one American who doesn’t believe a single thing we hear from this presidential imposter.

We are faced with at least two terrible prospects.

  • One is that the president knew about the intelligence reports and did nothing to stop a hostile foreign power from paying terrorists when they kill our service personnel.
  • The other is that he received the briefings on his desk, but didn’t look at them. He didn’t bother to read the important material that had been brought to him by the intelligence experts who spend their careers working to protect U.S. interests from hostile acts.

If he knew about it and did nothing to stop this hideous activity, then we have a president who — in my mind — has committed a treasonous act.

What did Donald Trump know and when did he know it? We need a full accounting of the wreckage this imbecile has done to the nation’s highest office.

Oh, how we need a dose of the courage that Howard Baker exhibited during that earlier intense crisis.

military news

How would I react to this news?

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A social media friend posed a fascinating question to me regarding the latest scandal involving Donald Trump, the one involving reports that he failed to respond to intelligence that Russia was paying bounties to Taliban terrorists who killed U.S. servicemen and women.

He noted that I had served in the military and wondered how I would react to such reports that the commander in chief was looking the other way at news that an enemy state had put a bounty on my head.

You know what? I cannot answer that question definitively. It’s hypothetical and when I am faced with such a question, I tend to fall back on how “I would hope to respond.” I hope I would be filled with rage at the individual who sent me into harm’s way.

I was a 19-year-old kid when I arrived in a war zone more than 50 years ago. I don’t have the foggiest recollection of where my head was in that moment. I cannot recall if I ever gave any thought to anything other than wishing my tour of duty would be over quickly so that I could return to “The World.”

What’s more, I was that we used to refer to as a REMF. The first three letters of that acronym were “rear echelon mother …” I let you figure out what the fourth letter meant. I served in the rear, at first on a flight line, then I went to work at a tactical operations center in  Da Nang, South Vietnam.

My concern at this moment deals with what the men and women who put their lives on the line while fighting for our country are thinking about the commander in chief and the latest astonishing scandal that is boiling up around him. I acknowledge a lack of “consensus” from intelligence officials on whether the Russians are paying bounties to Taliban fighters. But to my ears the reports seem credible.

Donald Trump might have known and did nothing. Maybe he never bothered to read the briefing papers that contained the intelligence. Perhaps the intelligence officers who provide Trump with this information never bothered to tell him what they knew. Are any of these possibilities acceptable? Absolutely not!

I cannot get past the notion that the men and women in harm’s way are mad as hell at the commander in chief.

military news

How do our service personnel react to this?

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I should ask him directly, but instead I will do so on this forum.

I have a member of my family who’s on active duty in the Army. He has served in combat in Afghanistan. He also is an avid supporter of Donald Trump. He is fond of saying “Trump 2020” when we chat via social media.

How in the world can my family member possibly continue to support a president who reportedly (a) didn’t know about reports that Russians were paying Taliban fighters to kill American military personnel or (b) knew about it but did nothing to stop it?

To me the reports of intelligence that Russians were paying a bounty  on our troops seem credible. We need answers. Now!

International news, military news

Trump commits grievous act

(Photo by Chris McGrath/Getty Images)

There is no limit, no depth to the measures that Donald Trump would use to betray the sacred oath he took when he became president of the United States.

I think we are witnessing the worst case imaginable. My outrage is challenging my ability to control myself.

Media reports indicated that Russian spies paid bounties to Taliban fighters for Americans they kill in Afghanistan. Donald Trump denied the reporting. Now it appears that intelligence officials have confirmed to the media that they placed reports of those bounties on Trump’s desk. They were contained in his briefing papers … at least three months ago.

And yet the president did nothing! He didn’t intercede on behalf of the troops he swore to protect.

I don’t know how others would define that, but my sense is that we have a commander in chief who is aiding and abetting a terrorist organization. He has the legal and political authority — if not the moral standing — to raise holy hell with Russian strongman Vladimir Putin. He didn’t do it. Donald Trump sat by silently while Putin was authorizing payments to Taliban terrorists who killed our men and women in battle.

Let that sink in. Have you ever in your life heard of anything so outrageous, so disgraceful, so reprehensible? We appear to have a president of the United States, when given reportedly actionable intelligence that the leader of a hostile power is paying bounties on the deaths of our service personnel, has done not a damn thing to halt it!

I’ll pose this question: Is this the act of a traitor?

We need to get straight to the root of what has been reported.

International news

This is what ignorance produces … allegedly!

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Donald J. “Ignoramus in Chief” Trump is known to disregard his daily  presidential briefing material, which he says is “boring.”

He relies on his own instincts, he says. Well, perhaps he ought to rethink the value of such idiocy.

CNN is reporting that Trump received word in the spring about Russian intelligence officials offering bounties to Taliban terrorists for every American serviceman and woman they kill. Trump got the information in his Daily Presidential Briefing, which used to be required reading for presidents. Not with this clown.

Trump has dismissed the reporting on the bounty story, calling it “fake news.”

However, it did arrive on his desk in the form of his PDB, why in the name of competent governance didn’t he know about it? This looks to me to be yet another example of stunning incompetence on the part of our commander in chief.

The PDB is intended to provide the president with classified information he can use to make command decisions. It seems to be that such PDB info on Russian goons paying terrorists money to kill our troops qualifies as the kind of intelligence the president would deem critical. Don’t you think?

No one on his national security staff thought to bring this information directly to Trump’s attention? Is that what we are led to believe? I have to wonder whether Trump has hired a cabal of rubes to advise him on these matters of critical importance.

My own sense is that Trump knew about the bounty being offered but chose to ignore it because it would anger Vladimir Putin, the former Soviet spy who now governs as Russian president.

I will venture to note that it means to me that Donald Trump is looking the other way when Russia behaves as a state sponsor of terrorism. Hey, I thought Donald Trump took an oath to protect our fighting men and women against this kind of battlefield horror.

International news

Have you given Vlad fair warning, Mr. POTUS?

OK, Mr. President … the cat is out of the bag.

Our nation’s intelligence network — yeah, the folks you have denigrated in front of Vladimir Putin — have come up with some intel that says Russian spooks are paying Taliban terrorists money for every American serviceman or woman they kill on the battlefield in Afghanistan.

You said you weren’t briefed on it by the CIA, the DNI, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the FBI, the National Security Council or the national security adviser. I don’t believe that for a second.

Still, the word is out. The New York Times has reported it. You dismiss it as “fake news.” C’mon! Get real. The Times is standing foursquare behind its story and the reporting that went into it.

You now need to get on that secure phone in the West Wing, you need to call Russian goon in chief Vladimir Putin and read him the riot act. Except you likely won’t do that. Why? I only can figure that Putin has some goods on you.

I mean, former national security adviser John Bolton says Putin plays you “like a fiddle.” I happen to believe Bolton. You dismiss your former adviser — one of the so-called “best people” — as a “wacko” and a “disgruntled employee.”

So now that the whole world has heard the story about the bounty, what in the name of tough-guy leadership are you going to do about it? Anything? Or are you going to roll over to get your overfed gut patted by the strongman who is laughing his a** off at the havoc he is creating within our system of government.

military news

Trump didn’t know about bounty on U.S. troops? Huh?

Donald John “Liar in Chief” Trump likely is lying yet again, which is not even a little bit of a surprise to those of us who don’t believe a single word that flies out of his mouth.

He says he didn’t know anything about reports of Russian government officials putting up bounty money to pay Taliban fighters who kill U.S. troops fighting them in Afghanistan.

He got no briefings from the Joint Chief of Staff; nothing from the CIA; nothing from the office of National Intelligence; not a word from field commanders. Trump instead is calling the New York Times report another bit of “fake news” and says that “no one has been tougher on Russia” than he has. “We stand by our story, the details of which have not been denied by the President’s own National Security agencies,” a New York Times spokesperson told The Hill.

I believe Donald Trump is lying to us, ladies and gentlemen. I believe further that the CIA knew about the bounty, as did the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the FBI, the office of National Intelligence.

Are we to accept the notion that none of these agency heads reported a single thing to the commander in chief? That no one told him that Russians are paying Taliban terrorists a bounty for the U.S. warriors they kill on the battlefield?

I have to ask: If Trump was not briefed, why wasn’t he told? If the military and intelligence officials were keeping this information from the man in charge, then they are guilty of the most grotesque mismanagement of our war effort imaginable.

Except that I believe Donald Trump knew about it … and that he is lying to us. 

International news

Can this peace deal take root … with the Taliban involved?

You may count me as one American who wants like the dickens for the peace deal worked out with the terrorist group Taliban to work.

However, you also may count me as one who is suspicious to the max of any deal involving this treacherous band of cutthroat, extremist fanatics.

The Trump administration has announced a deal with the Taliban that will involve a fairly rapid drawdown of U.S. troops from the battlefield in Afghanistan. Donald Trump vowed to end our nation’s longest war. I want him to succeed in that effort.

The deal is fraught with peril.

It depends on whether the Taliban make good on their end of the deal, which includes a pledge to no longer support international terror efforts and to cease being a haven for terrorist groups … which is what got us involved in this war starting with the attacks on 9/11. We all remember that, yes?

I find it fascinating that when Barack Obama once said he would “talk” to the terror group, he was vilified by those who called him soft on terrorists. Now it’s Donald Trump who did the talking, but … where’s the criticism? Hmm. Go figure.

As the Associated Press reported: Under the agreement, the U.S. would draw down its forces to 8,600 from 13,000 in the next three to four months, with the remaining U.S. forces withdrawing in 14 months. The complete pullout would depend on the Taliban meeting their commitments to prevent terrorism, including specific obligations to renounce al-Qaida and prevent that group or others from using Afghan soil to plot attacks on the U.S. or its allies.

Can we really and truly depend on the Taliban to keep their word?

Let us hope so.

International news

Hoping for an actual breakthrough with Taliban

(Photo by Olivier Douliery / AFP) 

Oh, my … I do hope for an actual peace treaty with the Taliban.

Such an agreement could end the longest war in U.S. history, the one that began in retaliation for the 9/11 terrorist attack on this country.

Donald Trump ventured to Afghanistan for Thanksgiving, broke bread with the troops and then announced to the world that peace talks with the Taliban had resumed. Remember, though, that he broke these talks off after an attack by Taliban fighters that killed an American serviceman.

What was so appalling at that moment was that Trump was going to bring the Taliban to Camp David while the nation was commemorating the 9/11 attack. Bad call, Mr. President.

So, now the talks are back on, as the president has said.

I want the war to end. I grew weary long ago of hearing of our men and women dying in combat. I am going to hope for the best here.

One word of caution: We are negotiating with a cunning, hideous, gruesome bunch of monsters. The Taliban are among the worst of the worst that humankind can produce. I worry that they cannot be trusted as far we can throw any of them.

If these talks produce an actual agreement and if it means an end to the nation’s longest war, then count me in.

Let us be wary, though, of the monstrous cabal with whom we are dealing.