As President Biden exits the country and things go sideways as expected….
But MUCH faster?
We begin to get looks under the cover’s back in the day….
(Remember….Joe Biden was the Vice President during the Obama admin….)
From a book, The Afghanistan Papers: U.S. officials failed to tell the truth about the war in Afghanistan, that looks at President Obama and Afghanistan conflict in a not so pretty way…
President Barack Obama had promised to end the war, so on Dec. 28, 2014, U.S. and NATO officials held a ceremony at their headquarters in Kabul to mark the occasion. A multinational color guard paraded around. Music played. A four-star general gave a speech and solemnly furled the green flag of the U.S.-led international force that had flown since the beginning of the conflict.
In a statement, Obama called the day “a milestone for our country” and said the United States was safer and more secure after 13 years of war….
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In fact, the war was nowhere near a conclusion, “responsible” or otherwise, and U.S. troops would fight and die in combat in Afghanistan for many years to come. The baldfaced claims to the contrary ranked among the most egregious deceptions and lies that U.S. leaders spread during two decades of warfare.
Obama had scaled back military operations over the previous three years, but he failed to pull the United States out of the quagmire. At the time of the ceremony, about 10,800 U.S. troops remained, a decrease of almost 90 percent from the surge of forces that he had sent to Afghanistan in his first term. Obama promised to withdraw the rest of the troops by the end of 2016, coinciding with the end of his term in office, save for a residual force at the U.S. Embassy….
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This account is adapted from “The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War,” a Washington Post book, which will be published Aug. 31 by Simon & Schuster. A narrative history of what went wrong in Afghanistan, the book is based on interviews with more than 1,000 people who played direct roles in the war, as well as thousands of pages of documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act….
image….NBC News
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Marine General Joseph F. Dunford (L), US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter (2L) and US Vice President Joe R. Biden (R) listen while US President Barack Obama makes a statement in the Rosevelt Room of the White House October 15, 2015 in Washington, DC. President Obama on Thursday announced thousands of US troops will remain in Afghanistan past 2016, retreating from a major campaign pledge and acknowledging Afghan forces are not ready to stand alone. AFP PHOTO/BRENDAN SMIALOWSKIBRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images