Friday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed Jihad Watch’s Robert Spencer to the newsmakers line to discuss the incompetence of the Biden administration and suspected Barack Obama’s involvement.
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Afghan Christians and other religious groups whose faith has placed them at extreme risk to Taliban persecution are reportedly turning to a Glenn Beck organization for help after being turned away at the Kabul airport by the State Department.
The names of Afghan Christians and others appear on U.S. government lists of qualified evacuees, but sources say the State Department has not been honoring their commitment to rescue those still trapped in the Taliban-controlled country.
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According to a story in the Washington Free Beacon, as millions of Afghan women are abandoned to subjugation and torture at the hands of the Taliban, President Joe Biden’s Defense Department (DoD) will celebrate “Women’s Equality Day” on Thursday by hosting a 5K run at Scott Air Force Base in Illinois.
“Women’s Equality Day gives us an opportunity to reflect on the many benefits of true equality and the role of women in our public life,” the military’s diversity and inclusion officers wrote in an email announcing the event. No registration is required to participate, and prizes will be awarded to the top three finishers.
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Tennessee Representative Mark Green (R-07-TN) says that after the suicide bomber attacks, it is time to extend the Taliban’s August 31 withdrawal deadline “indefinitely.” Green says that the attacks from terrorists broke the safe passage agreement between the Taliban and the United States. Green, a former military veteran who helped in the Iraq mission to capture Saddam Hussein, called the situation “disgusting.”
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President Joe Biden told those responsible for the attacks on Kabul airport today: “We will hunt you down and make you pay.”
Biden made the remarks during an address to the nation on Thursday regarding the terrorist attack that killed 12 U.S. service members outside Kabul airport in Afghanistan.
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Capitol Hill Republicans on Thursday intensified their calls for President Biden’s resignation following explosions outside a Kabul, Afghanistan, airport, killing four Marines and wounding or injuring dozens more while also throwing U.S. evacuations into further disarray.
“4 US Marines killed in this morning’s attacks in #Afghanistan and another 3 wounded,” Georgia Rep. Jody Hice tweeted. “President Biden is responsible for every single drop of blood spilled in his botched withdrawal. #BidenMustResignNow.”
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Two explosions were reported in Kabul, Afghanistan, Thursday, killing at least 70 people, and injuring dozens more, including multiple Marines, eleven of whom have died. (See update below for the latest on casualties).
A suicide bomb reportedly detonated outside the Hamid Karzai International Airport (HKIA), and another bomb went off at the nearby Baron Hotel, where Americans have been gathering for rescue and evacuation.
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Just 12 days before President Biden ordered the withdrawal of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, the U.S. intelligence community warned the White House that allowing the Taliban to control the country would put Afghan women at grave risk, according to a little-noticed intelligence assessment.
Biden nonetheless pressed ahead with the plan – with the support of his vice president, Kamala Harris, who boasted that she was the last person in the room with the president when he made the decision and felt comfortable with the plan.
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It might seem that there is little to be added to what the whole world has witnessed viewing the unutterable shambles of the U.S. departure from Afghanistan. But that would be an illusion. The story of the perilous departure from Afghanistan of NATO forces and civilians and their Afghan collaborators who are now in mortal danger is obviously a matter of great suspense. The United States could certainly tell the Taliban government of Afghanistan that if all those whom the Western powers wished to evacuate were not allowed to leave it would be an act of war. If there were the will to act on that ultimatum, it would be successful.
But under the circumstances, the credibility of such a threat would probably have to be proved by acting on it. As some commentators have mentioned, this would be morally justified and is morally required and the administration would simply have to accept that it has bungled the withdrawal, and must execute an immediate but brief return. The Biden Administration, after seven months, has shown no competence whatever in foreign or national security policy.
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Airbnb, a vacation home rental site, is offering free temporary housing to around 20,000 Afghan refugees across the world, the company announced Tuesday.
“As tens of thousands of Afghan refugees resettle around the world, where they stay will be the first chapter in their new lives,” Airbnb CEO and co-founder Brian Chesky said in a statement. “For these 20,000 refugees, my hope is that the Airbnb community will provide them with not only a safe place to rest and start over, but also a warm welcome home.”
Around 3.5 million people living in Afghanistan have been displaced, including around 270,000 due to Taliban advances since January, the U.N. reported on July 13. Around 10,400 people were evacuated by U.S. military flights from Afghanistan Sunday and another 6,660 were taken Monday, according to the Associated Press.
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The former minister of interior affairs for Afghanistan was reportedly seen fleeing the country with refugees, Richard Engel, a chief foreign correspondent for NBC News, said Monday.
“Some Afghan officials from fallen govt escaping with refugees. A senior Qatari official told me among those they’ve identified are former interior minister Gen. Abdul Satar Mirzakwal, one of his deputies and a sr army official,” Engel tweeted.
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CIA Director William J. Burns secretly met with the leader of the Taliban in Kabul on Monday, The Washington Post reported.
Burns met with Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Taliban’s de-facto leader, in the highest-level in-person meeting between the Biden administration and the Taliban since the group seized Kabul, several U.S. officials told The Washington Post. The meeting took place amid the Biden administration’s continued efforts to withdraw American citizens and Afghan allies as the Taliban consolidates its rule.
The U.S. currently plans to withdraw all personnel by Aug. 31, but President Joe Biden indicated he could extend that time frame if there are still people left in Afghanistan.
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In the “Nicomachean Ethics,” Aristotle has a lot to say about the activity of choice and its place in securing “eudaimonia,” that “good-spiritedness” that is synonymous with human fulfillment.
Choice is critical in the metabolism of virtue. But, Aristotle points out, it is possible for someone, through bad choices, to put himself in a situation from which choice cannot rescue him.
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While the Taliban and Iranian mullahs still enjoy Twitter privileges, a growing number of Americans, mostly of conservative persuasion, face a range of restrictions imposed on their accounts by U.S. social media platforms.
The list of Americans who have seen their social media reach limited is topped by former U.S. President Donald Trump, who has been banned indefinitely on Twitter and for two years on Facebook. More recently, Georgia GOP Rep. Majorie Taylor Greene was temporarily silenced by Twitter.
The firebrand freshman congresswoman was suspended earlier this month for seven days for what Twitter called “misinformation” for arguing COVID-19 masks and vaccines are “failing,” as more fully vaccinated Americans are contracting the virus’s highly contagious delta strain.
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At first blush, it may not seem that the Democrats’ $4.5 trillion infrastructure and spending plans and President Joe Biden’s bungled exit from Afghanistan have a nexus. But they do in China’s rare metals monopoly.
Beijing already dominates the rare metals market needed for electronics, electric car batteries and computers, a reality made more painfully obvious with the current computer chip shortage that is slowing production of new U.S. cars.
And now with the haphazard U.S. withdrawal from Kabul, one of the world’s largest untapped deposits of lithium — estimated by some at $1 trillion in Afghanistan — is poised to fall into China’s hands just as Biden has ordered that half all U.S. cars be electric by 2030 and congressional Democrats prepare to vote to invest tens of billions of dollars more to push that goal further.
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As the Taliban continues to take over the government of Afghanistan, Virginia is willing to take in thousands of Afghan refugees, Gov. Ralph Northam announced on Twitter.
“Last week I was honored to meet some of the thousands of Afghan citizens and families who have sought refuge at Fort Lee in Virginia,” Northam tweeted. “I’m coordinating with [Washington] DC and have made it clear: we’re ready and willing to take thousands more. Virginia will continue to serve as [a] safe harbor.”
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The U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency is processing airlifted Afghan refugees in locations like Germany, Bahrain and Qatar before sending them to the Washington D.C.-area Dulles International airport, using biometrics when possible to identify those without official travel papers, according to internal memos obtained by Just the News.
The memos acknowledge all refugees are being screened for COVID-19 after they arrive in the United States, and some may be arriving without their identities ascertained.
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President Joe Biden boasted during a press conference Friday that his administration supported the evacuation of the French embassy in Kabul while at the same time American citizens are being told the U.S. government cannot escort them to the airport.
The U.S. Embassy in Kabul informed American citizens on Thursday that the Biden administration “cannot ensure safe passage to the airport.” The message came one day after Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the U.S. military lacks the capability to escort Americans trapped behind enemy lines to the airport.
However, the Biden administration did have the capability to provide support to a convoy of hundreds of French people from their embassy to the airport, the president said Friday.
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Joe Biden’s national security team reportedly ignored the Trump administration’s careful plans for withdrawing from Afghanistan, resulting in the nightmare scenario currently unfolding in the war-torn country.
Former National Security Council Senior Director Kash Patel told Just the News’ John Solomon on Thursday, “I don’t even know that anyone could have made this awful scenario up. It’s literally worse than you could possibly conjure.”
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“[N]o one’s being killed right now, God forgive me if I’m wrong about that, but no one’s being killed right now.”
That was President Joe Biden’s Aug. 18 description of the situation on the ground in Afghanistan to ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos, where the U.S.-backed government there has been toppled by the Taliban in an offensive that began in early May.
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Army Maj. Gen. Hank Taylor and Pentagon Spokesman John Kirby dodged a reporter’s question about whether the US military is buying aviation fuel from the Taliban as evacuation efforts continue at Hamid Karzai International Airport (HKIA) in Kabul.
During a briefing at the Pentagon Thursday, Kirby also revealed that of the 2,000 people evacuated over the last 24 hours, only 300 of them were Americans.
“How are you fueling your planes… are you now in a position that you have to buy fuel from the Taliban?” asked Fox News national security correspondent Jennifer Griffin during a briefing at the Pentagon.
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Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, is best known as home to the Army’s tank division, the revered Old Ironsides military insignia and the country’s largest military-controlled airspace. But the Biden administration’s botched exit from Afghanistan is turning the vast installation into ground zero for the evacuation of Afghans who spent two decades helping the United States fight the war against terror.
Texas Sen. John Cornyn says the fort is preparing to receive 10,000 Afghan refugees, and military officials have hinted that number could reach much higher.
It’s the second major wave of civilian guests to be hosted at the fort, which began this spring helping the Homeland Security and Health and Human Services Departments to house thousands of unaccompanied minor children who were brought across the border.
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The Biden Administration quashed a critical State Department program designed to help Americans evacuate safely out of crisis zones just months prior to the fall of Kabul, the National Pulse reported Wednesday.
The “Contingency and Crisis Response Bureau” was established late last year to handle medical, diplomatic, and logistical support involving Americans overseas.
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“Our military mission in Afghanistan will conclude on August 31st. The drawdown is proceeding in a secure and orderly way, prioritizing the safety of our troops as they depart… And thanks to the way in which we have managed our withdrawal, no one — no one U.S. forces or any forces have — have been lost. Conducting our drawdown differently would have certainly come with a increased risk of safety to our personnel.”
That was President Joe Biden as recently as July 8 justifying not just a drawdown, but a rapid drawdown of U.S. military presence in Afghanistan, trying to reach an arbitrary goal of zero troops in the country by the end of this month.
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White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said Tuesday that “certainly a fair amount” of U.S. weaponry that was in the possession of Afghan Security Forces has now fallen in the hands of the Taliban.
Sullivan spoke at a White House press briefing two days after the Taliban took control of Afghanistan and was asked whether the Biden administration knows where the billions of dollars in weaponry that the U.S. supplied the Afghan government will ultimately end up.
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One of the five Taliban commanders who was released from Guantanamo Bay in 2014 by former president Barack Obama in exchange for Army deserter Bowe Bergdahl, is emerging as a key figure who helped the insurgents seize power in Afghanistan.
Khairullah Khairkhwa, along with the other freed detainees, used Qatar as a base to form a Taliban regime in exile, and eventually became an official negotiator for peace talks with the Biden regime, the New York Post reported.
Khairkhwa previously served as Spokesperson of the Taliban regime, Governor of the Kabul Province of the Taliban regime, and Minister of Internal Affairs of the Taliban regime, according to the United Nations National Security Council.
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On Tuesday, Twitter admitted in a statement that they have no plans to ban the official accounts of the Taliban and its spokesmen, even after the radical Islamist group had seized control of the nation of Afghanistan over the weekend, as reported by the New York Post.
When asked about maintaining such accounts, the statement released by Twitter mostly dodged the issue and deferred to basic platitudes about how the social media giant would “continue to proactively enforce” its rules, and would only ban tweets that include “glorification of violence, platform manipulation, and spam.”
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Tuesday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed (R-TN) Senator Bill Hagerty to the newsmakers line in an exclusive interview addressing the United States withdrawal from Afghanistan.
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A Democratic senator compared the scene in Kabul as the U.S. rushed to evacuate embassy personnel and Afghan allies to the fall of Saigon in 1975 on Monday.
“Sad. My father was our next-to-last ambassador in Saigon, and our ambassador when ‘peace deal’ was negotiated in Laos,” tweeted Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island. “How that all ended deserved more attention.”
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After listening to President Joe Biden’s speech on Monday defending his decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan, Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ-05) joined former President Donald Trump and Democrat-turned-Republican Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-NJ-02) in calling on Biden to resign due to Afghanistan falling to the Taliban. Biden pulled out most of the U.S. troops from the country after 20 years of fighting the Taliban, a move that Trump had said would only be feasible if the Taliban stuck to the conditional peace agreement he negotiated a year and a half ago.
Biggs told Newsmax host Chris Saucedo that Trump had a plan to withdraw the troops in a manner that would have worked without leaving the country to the Taliban. “Most Americans didn’t want us to withdraw from Afghanistan, we just wanted to withdraw with honor and with a peaceful process to go ahead to save lives there and to save American lives and have a more secure future for this country after all that we have sacrificed.” He said Biden has been “absolutely incompetent in every way on every policy front whether domestic or foreign.”
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Members of neither party in Michigan’s congressional delegation are yet weighing in on Rep. Jeff Van Drew’s (R-NJ) call for President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA-12) to resign in response to the Taliban’s retaking of Afghanistan.
Appearing on Fox News Sunday night, Van Drew castigated the White House in stark terms.
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Over 200 Afghan allies arrived at Fort Lee, in Virginia, on the first of many expected flights bringing thousands of people who assisted the U.S. military to America, Axios reported Friday.
President Joe Biden promised to help Afghan interpreters and other people who aided U.S. forces during the war, according to Axios. Over 700 people and their family members are expected to come to the U.S. on special immigrant visas as American forces withdraw from Afghanistan.
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New York City mayoral candidate Maya Wiley would not say whether she thinks the U.S. is comparable to the Taliban Thursday, video shows.
Wiley was questioned about Minnesota Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar’s comments comparing the U.S. and Israel to the Taliban and Hamas, video shows. She refused to answer and added that she was proud of her multiple congressional endorsements.
“I am not going to answer this question because I have been, actually, just come out of the debate, I appreciate you asking,” Wiley said in the video.
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Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN-05) caused another rift in the Democrat Party this week when she openly compared the United States and Israel to the Taliban and Hamas in a now-deleted tweet.
After an exchange with Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, wherein Omar demanded an International Criminal Court investigation into possible war crimes in Afghanistan and Palestine, Omar took to Twitter, saying there have been “unthinkable atrocities committed by the U.S., Hamas, Israel, Afghanistan, and the Taliban.”
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ISLAMABAD – The United States and the Taliban signed a landmark agreement Saturday in Doha, Qatar, setting the stage for ending a nearly 19-year-old war in Afghanistan and bringing back home thousands of American troops deployed there.
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ISLAMABAD – In simultaneously issued statements, U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo and the Taliban announced Friday that a deal between the U.S. and the Taliban will be signed February 29, paving the way toward ending the longest American war in history.
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ISLAMABAD/BRUSSELS — The United States confirmed Thursday it has negotiated a “seven-day reduction in violence” proposal with the Taliban to move toward a political settlement to the war in Afghanistan.
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On Tuesday’s Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 am to 8:00 am – Michael Patrick Leahy spoke with weekly special guest and former Breitbart colleague, Iraq war veteran and current Army Reserve Sergeant Neil McCabe about the President Trump’s recent pull out of the Taliban meeting.
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The United States has reached a draft framework agreement with the Taliban that will require American troops to vacate five military bases in Afghanistan within 135 days of the signing of the document.
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U.S. President Donald Trump says he will review the case of a decorated Special Forces veteran accused of murder in the 2010 killing of a suspected Taliban bombmaker in Afghanistan. The U.S. leader said that “at the request of many,” he would weigh the murder charge against Major Matthew Golsteyn,…
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