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Report: Here’s How Much Weaponry The Taliban Are Believed To Have Seized From U.S.

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The Taliban has seized dozens of aircraft and thousands of weapons, vehicles and pieces of high-tech equipment in Afghanistan that was funded by the U.S. government, Reuters reported.

Billions of dollars worth of military equipment that the U.S. gave to the now-defunct Afghan military has been obtained by Taliban insurgents, officials with knowledge of the situation told Reuters. The massive weapons stockpile left behind in the Middle Eastern nation includes valuable technology such as night-vision goggles, unmanned aerial vehicles and Black Hawk combat helicopters. . .

Current and former officials said the federal government is increasingly concerned the technology could be obtained or sold to U.S. enemies like Iran, China and Russia which have vowed to maintain a diplomatic relationship with the insurgents who now possess the weaponry, Reuters reported. The Taliban invaded Afghanistan’s capital city Kabul on Sunday, triggering the sudden collapse of the Western-supported Afghan government.

Officials estimated the Taliban, which controls the vast majority of the war-torn Middle Eastern nation, is in possession of 2,000 armored vehicles and up to 40 aircraft, including Black Hawks and pricey ScanEagle drones, according to Reuters. Since 2003, the U.S. has given more than 600,000 infantry weapons like rifles, 162,000 pieces of communications equipment and 16,000 night-vision goggles to the Afghan security forces. (Read more from “Report: Here’s How Much Weaponry The Taliban Are Believed To Have Seized From U.S.” HERE)

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Heartbreaking: U.S. Student Details Horrors Afghan Family Experiencing After Taliban Takeover

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A college student at Virginia Tech whose parents emigrated from Afghanistan is detailing the horrors her relatives are experiencing with the Taliban in control of the country.

“The night after the Taliban took over, I wake up – it’s another day here in America. I look at my phone and I have a missed call and a couple messages from a cousin in Afghanistan,” Mariam Farzayee, president of the Afghan Student Association at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, told Fox News. “He’s begging me for help to get him out, he says, ‘Is there any way you can sponsor me to leave? Is there any way you can help me get into another country?’”

“He was talking to me about he’s terrified for his own life and he feels so helpless and doesn’t know what he can really do from there,” Farzayee said, detailing the photos and videos she received showing how Taliban fighters were outside her cousin’s building. “He said the night before, the Taliban had come to his house and they broke a ton of windows in his neighborhood and they also broke the windows in his cars. He said all he could do was shelter in place because there’s really nothing he can do.”

Farzayee said her cousin was at the airport when he witnessed several people being trampled to death as crowds stampeded onto the tarmac and some desperately clung to the side of a U.S. Air Force C-17 transport plane as it took off. She said he has since returned to his home not far outside of Kabul. (Read more from “Heartbreaking: U.S. Student Details Horrors Afghan Family Experiencing After Taliban Takeover” HERE)

Photo credit: The U.S. National Archives

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Poll: Americans More Worried About U.S.-Based ‘Extremist’ Groups Than Foreign Threats

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More Americans are concerned about threats from extremist groups based in the United States than those from other countries, according to a new poll.

A survey released Thursday by the Associated Press found that 65 percent of U.S. adults are “extremely” or “very” concerned about the threat to the country from domestic groups, compared to 50 percent who feel the same about the threat from foreign extremist groups.

There was no significant difference between Republicans and Democrats regarding the threat from foreign extremist groups. Forty-nine percent of Democrats reported being extremely or very concerned about the issue, compared to 54 percent of Republicans. (Read more from “Poll: Americans More Worried About U.S.-Based ‘Extremist’ Groups Than Foreign Threats” HERE)

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Is the US Ambassador to the UN Serious About This Statement to Taliban? (VIDEO)

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Even a casual observer of the United Nations knows the international body is a joke. So U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield boasting about her sternly-worded letter to the Taliban—yes, Islamic jihadists—can’t possibly come as a surprise, can it?

Speaking to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Tuesday, Thomas-Greenfield said the Taliban is being closely watched.

“We are hearing from people in Afghanistan that they are getting threats from the Taliban, and we have expressed in no uncertain terms here at the United Nations through a very strongly worded press statement from the Security Council that we expect the Taliban to respect human rights, including the rights of women and girls,” she said.

(Read more from “Is the US Ambassador to the UN Serious About This Statement to Taliban? (VIDEO)” HERE)

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Mike Pompeo Outlines How Trump Admin Planned to Handle Afghanistan, Taliban

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Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said the Trump administration had a better approach to dealing with Taliban “butchers” and their plan would have led to a more successful withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Pompeo spoke to the Fox Business Network on Monday about U.S. troop drawdown from the country following chaotic scenes in Kabul as the Taliban took the capital city on Sunday. . .

“We had a model where we’d made clear what our red lines were,” Pompeo went on. “We’d made clear the things we were prepared to do to defend them. We could have executed a plan in a way that would have led to the orderly withdrawal.”

“We would have demanded that the Taliban actually deliver on the conditions that we laid out in the agreement – including the agreement to engage in meaningful power sharing agreement – something that we struggled to get them to do but made clear it was going to be a requirement before we completed our requirement to fully withdraw,” he said.

(Read more from “Mike Pompeo Outlines How Trump Admin Planned to Handle Afghanistan, Taliban” HERE)

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Where’d You Go, Joe? AWOL Biden Plans Getaway as Afghanistan Burns; Afghans in Taliban Crosshairs Plead For US to Stay; Americans and Afghans Brace for Siege of Kabul

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By New York Post. Republican leaders are slamming President Biden for taking a long weekend out of the public eye as major cities fall to the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Biden on Thursday sent 3,000 US troops to Kabul to evacuate embassy workers as the Taliban seized Herat and Kandahar, Afghanistan’s second- and third-largest cities — but he hasn’t commented publicly on the crisis since Tuesday.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said Friday that Biden “must immediately focus all efforts on making sure there is a plan to safely extract all American service members and civilians still remaining in Afghanistan.”

“He also owes the American public an answer on what he plans to do to make sure the region doesn’t turn into a breeding ground for more violent extremism that will lead to large-scale global attacks of terrorism,” McCarthy said.

Rep. Guy Reschenthaler (R-Pa.) told The Post, “this strategy of putting your head in the sand and not taking questions is a way to not get associated with his military debacle.” (Read more from “Where’d You Go, Joe? AWOL Biden Plans Getaway as Afghanistan Burns” HERE)

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Afghans in Taliban Crosshairs Want US to Stay and Protect Them

By New York Post. . . As of Friday, the Afghan government only controlled two other major cities, Kabul and Jalalabad. . .

“The Taliban is all around Mazar,” said a shopkeeper named Shamsula who appeared far more weathered than his 35 years. . .

He added: “But if America stays here, life would be good.”

Asif, 23, echoed that sentiment.

“We want very much for the US to stay,” he said in soft, halting English. (Read more from “Afghans in Taliban Crosshairs Want US to Stay and Protect Them” HERE)

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Americans and Afghans Brace for Siege of Kabul

By TIME. As Taliban militants wrest control of Afghanistan by seizing one major city after another, Afghan leaders are scrambling to develop a strategy to defend the capital from the militants, while U.S. officials are taking steps to evacuate the sprawling U.S. Embassy in the center of the city, should Kabul fall.

Just as the U.S. deadline to withdraw from the country approaches on Aug. 31, Afghan forces have collapsed on nearly all fronts in the face of an eight-day blitz mounted by Taliban attacking cities in the north, east and south. The insurgents have captured more than a dozen provincial capitals, resulting in more than two-thirds of the country falling into their hands.

In a rare call on Thursday, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani sought guarantees from U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin that American warplanes would provide air strikes against the insurgents to protect Kabul, current and former Afghan officials tell TIME. The same day, the Pentagon announced plans to send about 3,000 U.S. troops back into the city to help evacuate the American embassy and Afghan civilians who helped with the U.S.-led war effort.

The Biden Administration has thus far only committed to a limited air campaign supporting Afghan forces battling the insurgency. But U.S. officials say there will be U.S. air cover in support of the thousands of newly announced American troops heading to Kabul to complete U.S. military withdrawal. (Read more from “Americans and Afghans Brace for Siege of Kabul” HERE)

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US Troops Fatally Shoot Two Armed Men at Kabul Airport

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U.S. troops have fatally shot two armed men at Kabul’s airport, while images of Afghan civilians frantically trying to leave the country now under Taliban rule have dominated news coverage.

A Pentagon spokesman confirmed the two shootings Monday, but said it was not clear if the two men killed were affiliated with the Taliban.

“There have been security incidents at the field involving armed individuals shooting at U.S. forces. I want to reiterate that while our mission is not offensive, our forces have the inherent right of self defense, and they will respond accordingly to threats and attacks,” the Pentagon spokesperson told reporters Monday. “So in two separate incidents, U.S. forces did respond to hostile threats that resulted in the death of two armed individuals.”

The Wall Street Journal first reported that the two armed men approached the troops at the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul who were stationed there to help with the evacuation process.

A Pentagon official also told the Journal that at least three Afghan civilians were killed after being run over by a military jet carrying staff members, according to the Journal.

(Read more from “US Troops Fatally Shoot Two Armed Men at Kabul Airport” HERE)

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Big Surprise! Hollywood Celebs Blame Trump

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Hollywood celebrities have sprung into damage control mode following President Joe Biden’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, attempting to blame former President Donald Trump for Biden’s mismanaged and chaotic retreat that has left the country in Taliban control, including the U.S. embassy in Kabul.

Stars including Bette Midler, Sophia Bush, George Takei, and Rosanna Arquette have used their social media influencer status to assign blame for the fiasco to Trump, citing the former president’s 2020 agreement with the Taliban.

As Breitbart News reported, the Trump administration agreed to fully withdraw troops from Afghanistan by May 1, 2021, in exchange for the Taliban agreeing not to attack U.S. troops and to cut ties with al-Qaeda and other international terrorist groups.

But the Biden administration reneged on the Trump deal by extending the Afghan war by four months, before again changing the date for troop withdrawal to August 31. Biden’s prevarications prompted the Taliban to drop its end of the bargain, setting in motion the Islamic extremist group’s takeover of the country.

None of that stopped Bette Midler from trying to spin Biden’s debacle as Trump’s fault. “This should be laid at Trump’s fat feet,” the future Kennedy Center honoree tweeted Monday.

(Read more from “Big Surprise! Hollywood Celebs Blame Trump” HERE)

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Taliban Seizes US Military Equipment, Including Drones, Helicopters and Humvees

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The Taliban seized billions of dollars of US military equipment from Kunduz Airport this week, including Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles, drones and humvees, as the militant group has quickly taken control of key cities across the country.

German Journalist Julian Röpcke of Bild posted photos of equipment seized by the group.

Among the equipment taken include MaxxPro MRAP vehicles, ScanEagle Drones and humvees. Mr Röpcke chided the Biden administration’s “hasty withdrawal” without securing a peace deal or a follow-up mission. (Read more from “Taliban Seizes US Military Equipment, Including Drones, Helicopters and Humvees” HERE)

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Moment the Taliban Takes Control of Afghan Presidential Palace is Captured on Video

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Kabul formally fell to the Taliban on Sunday. Al Jazeera was able to capture the moment on video and through photos. As Spencer reported, President Ashraf Ghani had already fled the country.

(Read more from “Moment the Taliban Takes Control of Afghan Presidential Palace is Captured on Video” HERE)

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