Cut to the News
Cut through the clutter to today's top news
August 31, 2021
Good morning
Welcome to today's top news.
Leading the News . . .
Biden breaks promise to keep troops in Afghanistan until every American leaves . . . President Biden told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos just two weeks ago that American troops would stay until every last American got out. That didn’t happen. From an appearance on ABC’s Good Morning America: Stephanopoulos: “Are you committed to making sure that the troops stay until every American who wants to be out gets out?”
US estimates 100-200 Americans stuck in Afghanistan after US military withdrawal . . . Anywhere from 100 to 200 Americans who want to return home are still in Afghanistan, after the U.S. military has already withdrawn. "We believe there are still a small number of Americans, under 200 and likely closer to 100, who remain in Afghanistan and want to leave," Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Monday evening. "We're trying to
determine exactly how many." U.S. Central Command leader Marine Corps Gen. Frank McKenzie said Monday afternoon during a press briefing that the number of Americans still in Afghanistan who want to leave is in the "very low hundreds."
Taliban Vow to Enforce Islamic Rule After U.S. Exit . . . Taliban fighters and their supporters rallied across Afghanistan to celebrate the end of 20 years of foreign military presence, pledging to implement strict Islamic rule as ordinary Afghans grappled with the uncertain future ahead. Wall Street Journal
‘There Must Be Accountability’: 90 Retired Flag Officers Call On Austin, Milley To Resign Immediately . . . Nearly 90 retired generals and admirals signed a letter Monday calling for Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley to resign over their roles surrounding the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. “If they did not do everything within their authority to stop the hasty withdrawal, they should
resign,” they wrote. “Conversely, if they did do everything within their ability to persuade the [president] to not hastily exit the country without ensuring the safety of our citizens and Afghans loyal to America, then they should have resigned in protest as a matter of conscience and public statement.” “A fundamental principle in the military is holding those in charge responsible and accountable for their actions or inactions. There must be accountability at all levels for this tragic
and avoidable debacle,” the letter further read. Daily Caller
Video: Rebekah Koffler: US intel "experts must resign over multiple failures . . . Former Defense Intelligence Agency officer Rebekah Koffler discusses Afghanistan military operations on 'Varney & Co.' Fox Busines
Working dogs left behind in Afghanistan face ‘death or worse,’ animal-rights group says . . . American citizens and Afghan allies weren’t all the Biden administration left behind in its retreat from Afghanistan. The U.S. military abandoned its contracted working dogs, according to a statement Monday night by a major animal-welfare group. “These brave dogs do the same dangerous, lifesaving work as our military working dogs, and
deserved a far better fate than the one to which they have been condemned,” said Robin R. Ganzert, American Humane’s president and CEO. “It sickens us to sit idly by and watch these brave dogs who valiantly served our country be put to death or worse,” he said. Washington Times
Shocking video shows man hanging below Black Hawk flown by Taliban . . . Shocking footage appears to show the Taliban flying seized US Black Hawk helicopters over Afghanistan — including with someone hanging below one from a rope. “Our Air Force!” Talib Times — which claims to be the English language official account of the Taliban-run Islamic Emirate Afghanistan — gloated on Monday. “At this time, the Islamic Emirate’s air force
helicopters are flying over Kandahar city and patrolling the city,” the tweet said. In one clip, someone is clearly seen hanging below the chopper as it lowers in the sky. Some journalists insisted that it showed someone who had been hanged — and then paraded in the skies. Daily Caller
Biden Waived Congressional Mandate for Report on Afghanistan Withdrawal Risks . . . President Joe Biden waived a mandate in June that would have forced the Pentagon to provide a detailed report to Congress about the risks of leaving Afghanistan. Under the federal statute, the administration was barred from reducing troops in Afghanistan below 2,000 without first briefing Congress about the expected impact on U.S. counterterrorism
operations and the risk to American personnel. Biden waived the mandate in June, arguing that providing this information to Congress could undermine "the national security interests of the United States." Washington Free Beacon
Big Tech, woke finance crack down on Flynn, Gateway Pundit in cancel culture purge . . . In recent days, Twitter permanently banned independent journalist Alex Berenson, Google demonetized The Gateway Pundit from its ad network, and Chase Bank canceled the credit cards of retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn. With national attention riveted over the weekend on two major stories — the frantic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan amid its fall to
the Taliban and category 4 Hurricane Ida slamming into the Louisiana coast — Big Tech and woke finance dramatically extended the reach of cancel culture with brazen moves to silence and harass three high-profile voices of political and scientific dissent: independent journalist Alex Berenson, popular conservative news and opinion website The Gateway Pundit, and Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn. Just the News
Soviet Playbook: At the same time, Taliban is tweeting away. Sickening.
House GOP urges Dems to delay $3.5T spending package amid domestic, foreign woes . . . House Republicans urged Democrats on Tuesday to postpone consideration of President Biden’s $3.5 trillion expansion of America’s social safety net, arguing that Congress instead should address the nation’s mounting foreign and domestic woes. Rep. Bruce Westerman of Arkansas, the top Republican on the House Natural Resources Committee, said Democratic
leaders were putting the spending package above the interests of the country. Mr. Westerman made the argument in a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Raúl Grijalva of Arizona Washington Times
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Convicted rapist reached the U.S. on Afghan evacuation flight . . . A man who had been convicted of rape and deported from the U.S. was allowed to board an Afghan evacuation flight and reach America, law enforcement sources say. When American citizens were having trouble catching flights out of Kabul, Ghader Heydari made it on an Ethiopian Airlines charter flight for evacuees. Border officials flagged the 47-year-old on his arrival
at Washington Dulles International Airport. They appear to be the first to have spotted his criminal and immigration history and derailed his entry. Washington Times
So, We Have a Texas Shooting That Might Have Been 'Inspired by Foreign Terrorists' . . . Our longest war has concluded, but we left Americans behind. For days, the Biden administration couldn’t give us a straight answer on how many Americans remained stranded. The figures were ridiculous. They ranged from 1,500 to over 7,000. We couldn’t get an answer. Now, as we leave, it’s around 100-200. This is shambolic. The administration
keeps peddling the narrative that we got over 100,000 people out. No one cares unless they were our citizens. Would anyone be shocked if some terrorists were able to embed themselves with groups of key Afghan allies and their families?
We’re making the ground fertile for a terror attack, and we might have already seen one. It wasn’t a large-scale incident, though one woman did lose her life after being shot by a man who was investigated by the FBI in 2010. Authorities said that prior to the shooting, the suspect might have been inspired by foreign terrorists: Investigators are looking into whether a Texas man was inspired by foreign terrorists when he killed a Lyft driver in a Dallas suburb and later opened fire in
the police station of another suburb where officers fatally shot him. Townhall
US Treasury says China private equity's Magnachip purchase poses security risks . . . The U.S. Treasury Department said the acquisition of Magnachip Semiconductor Corp by a Chinese private equity firm posed "risks to national security," in another hurdle for Chinese companies trying to invest abroad in critical tech industries. In March, Chinese private equity firm Wise Road Capital agreed to acquire system chip manufacturer Magnachip in
a deal valued at $1.4 billion. Magnachip, which produces display and power chips, has production and R&D facilities based in South Korea.
Magnachip said in a SEC filing on Monday the U.S. Department of Treasury, in a letter to the company's legal counsel last Friday, said the acquisition posed "risks to the national security of the United States," and expects to seek President Joe Biden's decision on the matter. CFIUS, a committee under the U.S. Department of Treasury, had ordered the deal to be put on hold in June. Fox Business
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Qatar urges Taliban to accept foreign security presence at Kabul airport . . . The Taliban’s refusal to allow a foreign security presence at Kabul airport is thwarting international efforts to enable the transport hub to reopen to commercial flights after the US completes its withdrawal from Afghanistan, a senior Qatari official said. Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, Qatar’s foreign minister, told the Financial
Times that the Gulf state, which has been the west’s main interlocutor with the Taliban, was urging Afghanistan’s new rulers to accept outside assistance to operate the airport. “What is a clear [Taliban] objection is that they don’t want to see a foreign security presence in their airport or their territory,” Sheikh Mohammed said. “What we are trying to explain to them is that airport safety and security requires a lot more than securing the perimeters of the airport.” As the US
scrambled to complete the final withdrawal of its troops, fears mounted that thousands of Afghans who worked for western militaries and other entities would be stranded in the country and left at risk of Taliban reprisals. Financial Times
Video Shows Taliban Fighters In Stolen Military Gear Strolling Into Airport Hangar Once Controlled By US . . . A video posted on Twitter shows Taliban fighters wearing stolen U.S. military gear walking around a hangar at the now-abandoned Kabul airport. The video, recorded Monday by Los Angeles Times correspondent Nabih Bulos, shows several members of the Taliban entering a hangar formerly controlled by the U.S. examining helicopters that
were left behind after the Aug. 30 withdrawal. The Taliban fighters are armed and appear to be equipped in U.S. military gear, including helmets and ballistic vests. Daily Caller
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EU Recommends Halting Nonessential Travel From the U.S. Over Covid-19 . . . The European Union recommended halting nonessential travel from the U.S. because of the rise of Covid-19 cases, diplomats said Monday, ending a summer-vacation reprieve for American tourists. The decision came amid the growing spread of the Delta variant in the U.S., where vaccination rates have also now fallen behind the average rates of shots
in EU countries. The EU travel list, which is reviewed every two weeks, isn’t binding on member states, but it has generally set the pattern for who can visit the bloc. The EU decided in June to add the U.S. to its safe list. Still, member states retain control over all the rules for tourist travel, such as whether to impose quarantines on unvaccinated travelers and which certificates to accept as proof of having received a vaccine. Wall Street Journal
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Billions spent on Afghan army ultimately benefited Taliban . . . Built and trained at a two-decade cost of $83 billion, Afghan security forces collapsed so quickly and completely — in some cases without a shot fired — that the ultimate beneficiary of the American investment turned out to be the Taliban. They grabbed not only political power but also U.S.-supplied firepower — guns, ammunition, helicopters and more.
The Taliban captured an array of modern military equipment when they overran Afghan forces who failed to defend district centers. Bigger gains followed, including combat aircraft, when the Taliban rolled up provincial capitals and military bases with stunning speed, topped by capturing the biggest prize, Kabul, over the weekend. A U.S. defense official confirmed the Taliban’s sudden accumulation of U.S.-supplied Afghan equipment is enormous. U.S. military and intelligence agencies
utterly misjudged the viability of Afghan government forces — by the — which in some cases chose to surrender their vehicles and weapons rather than fight. AP
The Bidding War: How a young Afghan military contractor became spectacularly rich . . . America’s war in Afghanistan, which is now in its fifteenth year, presents a mystery: how could so much money, power, and good will have achieved so little? Congress has appropriated almost eight hundred billion dollars for military operations in Afghanistan; a hundred and thirteen billion has gone to reconstruction, more than was spent on the Marshall
Plan, in postwar Europe. General David Petraeus, a principal architect of U.S. counterinsurgency strategy, encouraged the practice of pumping money into the economy of Afghanistan, where the per-capita G.D.P. at the time of the invasion was around a hundred and twenty dollars. He believed that money had helped buy peace during his command of American forces in Iraq. “Employ money as a weapons system,” Petraeus wrote in 2008. “Money can be ‘ammunition.’ ” Associated Press
Total damage,economic loss from Hurricane Ida will be $70B -- $80B: . . . Total damage and economic loss from Hurricane Ida will fall between $70 billion and $80 billion, Accuweather’s Dr. Joel N. Myers said Monday. The weather service, which predicted significant wind damage along with storm surge and inland flooding with mass power outages, believes the power outages could last for a week or longer and will result in a near
complete shutdown of New Orleans and surrounding cities and towns, Meyers said. "Power outages will exacerbate extreme discomfort" caused by heat and humidity and will result in mold growth in impacted areas, he added, in addition to issues for people who rely on electronic medical equipment, such as CPAP machines. Fox Business
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CDC to Tackle ‘Gun Violence Epidemic’ . . . Biden’s CDC director announced the restart of a program researching “gun violence.” The Left has long played with definitions. As the late, great Rush Limbaugh astutely noted, they employ this underhanded redefinition tactic in an effort to confuse and convince Americans to embrace their incessant push for greater expansion of the government. The latest example comes from Joe
Biden’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky announced that the healthcare agency would be restarting a “gun violence” research program in an effort to better address America’s “epidemic” of firearms-related injuries and deaths. Patriot Post
Soviet Playbook: redefinition tactic is a classic Soviet tool to brainwash the population.
Colonial Williamsburg adds gay and transgender reenactments . . . Colonial Williamsburg is bringing a slice of gay and transgender history to life this Fall. The Colonial Williamsburg foundation created a Gender and Sexuality Diversity Committee in 2019 with the purpose of researching gay and transgender issues in the colonies. The result of the committee found multiple instances of lesbian and transgender people in the early years of
America's founding. The question in front of the researchers that framed the committee was: "What is the Western population’s view on sexuality and gender and how did they determine who was a man and who was a woman?” The goal was to piece together a more complete history of gay and transgender people in colonial times, according to the Virginia Gazette. Washington Examiner
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Nothing to smile about today . . . I am so sickened by what Biden and his "experts" have done to our country and in Afghanistan that I couldn't bring myself to research the funny stuff today. Sorry. Rebekah
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Rebekah
Rebekah Koffler
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