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Home » The Ghani phone call and the Congressional mandate: for Biden, it’s both the crime and the coverup

The Ghani phone call and the Congressional mandate: for Biden, it’s both the crime and the coverup

The New Neo Posted on by

The main part of the coverup right now – at least, as far as we know – is the declaration that the US military evacuation of Afghanistan was a success. The MSM is mainly falling in line, even though a week ago it temporarily seemed as though they had forgotten to be propagandists and vaguely remembered how to be reporters.

Yesterday, though, we had a curious leak of a transcript of Biden’s last phone call with the then-president of Afghanistan, Ashraf Ghani, occurring on July 23 of 2021. That was about three weeks before the fall of Kabul and five weeks before Biden’s hot-footed military exit from Afghanistan. At the time the phone call was made, Biden was busy reassuring the American public that all was well and the country would hold out against the Taliban for a long time.

I call the leak “curious” because this sort of thing was reserved for getting Trump. I don’t think there was a single leak of that sort with Obama (or Biden when he was VP), but here we are just seven months into Biden’s presidency and we have the leak of a diplomatic phone call. It makes me think one of two things. The first is that the leaker might have thought this reflects well on Biden – after all, he is relatively coherent in it. The second is that the leaker is well aware it makes him look bad, and the leaker represents a group of people, probably on the left, who are outraged with Biden. It may be significant that this leak was to Reuters, a British news agency generally on the left. So this may reflect the fact that the Brits are generally hopping mad at Biden. And rightly so; he betrayed and blindsided them in addition to so many others.

Here’s what the leak revealed [my emphasis]:

BIDEN:…I have been meeting with our Pentagon folks, and our national security people, as you have with ours and yours, and as you know and I need not tell you the perception around the world and in parts of Afghanistan, I believe, is that things aren’t going well in terms of the fight against the Taliban.

And there’s a need, whether it is true or not, there is a need to project a different picture.…

Pause for a moment and contemplate what he said. He is well aware that not only is there a perception that this is going to be a fiasco, but that it may be true. But he wants Ghani to cooperate in pretending it’s going much better than that.

More:

You clearly have the best military, you have 300,000 well-armed forces versus 70-80,000 and they’re clearly capable of fighting well, we will continue to provide close air support, if we know what the plan is and what we are doing. And all the way through the end of August, and who knows what after that.

We never provided air support, and certainly not “after that.” These are lies and I believe that Biden knew at the time they were lies, although I can’t prove it. Or maybe they’re not lies because Biden changed his mind. Or maybe he later forgot he said it. Anything is possible with this man.

He repeats himself for emphasis:

We are also going to continue to make sure your air force is capable of continuing to fly and provide air support.

Neither was done. Au contraire.

Chani replies:

GHANI: Mr. President, we are facing a full-scale invasion, composed of Taliban, full Pakistani planning and logistical support, and at least 10-15,000 international terrorists, predominantly Pakistanis thrown into this, so that dimension needs to be taken account of.

Ghani makes the magnitude of the threat clear, as well as the Pakistani element to it. Did Biden do any “taking care” of “that dimension”? If he did, I’ve not heard of it.

More from Ghani:

Second, what is crucial is, close air support, and if I could make a request, you have been very generous, if your assistance, particularly to our air force be front loaded, because what we need at this moment, there was a very heavily reliance on air power, and we have prioritized that if it could be at all front-loaded, we will greatly appreciate it.

“Front-loaded” means heavier at the start.

Why no air support? Did Biden forget, or did he just not give a crap right from the start? I think the latter: he didn’t like the optics or the risks of any air support and never had any intention of providing it. I can’t prove that, but it’s my strong suspicion. The whole thing is shot through with lies and betrayals on Biden’s part; just riddled with them.

Then there’s this deception closer to home:

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.”

The Biden administration spent months assuring Congress that the U.S.-trained Afghan forces would be able to forestall a Taliban takeover when American troops left the country on a pre-determined deadline. That assessment was proven wrong days after the withdrawal, when the Taliban overran the Afghan National Army and seized control of Kabul, forcing a chaotic evacuation of U.S. personnel and allies.

That’s quite a loophole, isn’t it? The Pentagon is supposed to provide the information, but the president can waive it more or less at will by defining disclosure as potentially affecting national security. And wouldn’t everything under the statute affect national security?

So the plans were kept secret from Congress, too. This constitutes a betrayal of the American people; but what else is new?

Biden was well aware – at least, when he had more of his faculties, and I think he continues to be aware – of the way the Vietnam War ended. In the following incident, he may have mischaracterized the endpoint there for South Vietnam as being the result of Nixon and Kissinger instead of the result of the Democrat-run Congress pulling the plug on the ARVN, but he knew the basic outline in terms of the politics of it:

By the time Biden became vice president in 2009, the disastrous war in Iraq, the endemic corruption of the Afghan government, and the return of the Taliban had made him a deep skeptic of the American commitment. He became the Obama administration’s strongest voice for getting out of Afghanistan. In 2010, he told RICHARD HOLBROOKE, Obama’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, that the U.S. had to leave Afghanistan regardless of the consequences for women or anyone else. According to Holbrooke’s diary, when he asked about American obligations to Afghans like the girl in the Kabul school, Biden replied with a history lesson from the final U.S. withdrawal from Southeast Asia in 1973: “F*** that, we don’t have to worry about that. We did it in Vietnam, Nixon and Kissinger got away with it.”

Will Biden and the Democrats get away with it? Our exit from Vietnam starts looking good compared to our exit from Afghanistan. Now Biden’s “F*** that” also extends to the Americans left behind, our European allies, and the American people who are left more vulnerable than before to fanatic Islamic terrorism.

Comments

The Ghani phone call and the Congressional mandate: for Biden, it’s both the crime <i>and</i> the coverup — 37 Comments

  2. Ghani (who provides yet further proof of the folly of allowing former professors into government) reportedly fled Afghanistan with nearly two hundred million in cash. Whether or not this turns out to be true, he will certainly be living in comfort and safety (probably somewhere in the Gulf), while his children have been enjoying lives of considerable luxury in this country, one in Brooklyn and the other in DC.

  3. “According to Holbrooke’s diary, when he asked about American obligations to Afghans like the girl in the Kabul school, Biden replied with a history lesson from the final U.S. withdrawal from Southeast Asia in 1973: “F*** that, we don’t have to worry about that. We did it in Vietnam, Nixon and Kissinger got away with it.”

    As morally bankrupt an individual as has ever occupied the Presidency. Getting away with it is all he cares about. What a pathetic excuse for a human being… with not one person in his ‘administration’ with enough common decency to resign in disgust.

  4. j e:

    The report about the cash is a rumor, and no evidence has been given for it.

    I don’t know about you, but I find it hard to blame him overmuch for leaving. Apparently he fled when he was told the Taliban were in the building, searching for him. Since his predecessor who had been in office when the Taliban took over in 1996 had been disemboweled and hung from a traffic light, perhaps it’s understandable that he fled.

    Plus, he knew the US had betrayed him.

  5. I don’t blame Ghani for leaving either. I would have vamoosed in his situation- only a fool fights in a no-win situation when there is a safe exit.

    This might have been leaked by the British given it is Reuters, but there is another possibility- it was leaked first to the major US papers and CNN, and they chose not run with it. It wouldn’t be the first time British news organs scooped American ones on bad looking stories for Democrats.

  6. So this phone call reveals that Biden betrayed everybody — the Afghans, the Americans and SIV holders still in country, and our NATO allies.

  7. Biden has lied in every press conference and speech he has given on Afghanistan in the last 3 weeks- every single one of them proven lies with this one transcript.

  9. Ghani had better be well hidden and/or secured- lots of people will want to shut him up, not just the Taliban.

  10. If Michael Yon is correct, there has also been a cover-up about the way in which American citizens were turned away at HKIA by American soldiers:
    “. . . Biden declared to a puzzled country on Tuesday that the U.S. evacuation from Afghanistan was an ‘extraordinary success,’ while his Pentagon portrayed a prosaic, workaday process to repatriate Americans still stranded in the war-torn country. . . . But text messages between U.S. military commanders and private citizens mounting last-minute rescues tell a far different story, one in which pleading American citizens were frantically left behind at the Kabul airport gate this past weekend to face an uncertain fate under Taliban rule while U.S. officials sought to spread the blame between high-ranking generals and the State Department. . . . Yon’s account, backed by three dozen text and email exchanges with frontline Army officials in Afghanistan, stands in sharp contrast to the claims of the Biden White House that U.S. citizens would not be left behind in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.”
    Email texts available at the link:
    https://justthenews.com/government/security/were-americans-people-screaming-outside-gates-kabul-airport-turned-away

  11. This could also be what happens when you cross the Intel Community.

    Q Mr. President, thank you very much. Your own intelligence community has assessed that the Afghan government will likely collapse.

    THE PRESIDENT: That is not true.

    Q Is it — can you please clarify what they have told you about whether that will happen or not?

    THE PRESIDENT: That is not true. They did not — they didn’t — did not reach that conclusion.

    Q So what is the level of confidence that they have that it will not collapse?

    THE PRESIDENT: The Afghan government and leadership has to come together. They clearly have the capacity to sustain the government in place. The question is: Will they generate the kind of cohesion to do it? It’s not a question of whether they have the capacity. They have the capacity. They have the forces. They have the equipment. The question is: Will they do it?

    And I want to make clear what I made clear to Ghani: that we are not going just sus- — walk away and not sustain their ability to maintain that force. We are. We’re going to also work to make sure we help them in terms of everything from food necessities and other things in — in the region. But — but, there’s not a conclusion that, in fact, they cannot defeat the Taliban. “

  12. While all these revelations are very interesting, I can’t help but worry that ultimately they won’t make a difference.

    It’s extremely frustrating. We can carefully list all the evidence that illustrates how Biden has betrayed America and its allies. There’s ample incontrovertible evidence of his incompetence, his mental deficiencies, as well as his moral deficiencies. But as long as the tech oligarchs and mainstream media information gatekeepers want to protect him, it’s likely he’ll remain in power. Obviously they fear Trump and Trumpism. They also know damn well that Kamala Harris would probably be even worse since she shares most of Biden’s weaknesses without Biden’s “likeability” factor.

  13. “Coverup”
    Oh, no…not another coverup…
    But YES!
    https://blazingcatfur.ca/2021/09/01/let-the-cover-up-begin-biden-officials-erased-afghan-weapons-reports-from-fed-websites/

    YES indeed, and as expected…for the art of the coverup is the Obama/”Biden” main and most prolific area of expertise…
    possessing a rare and unusual talent for the phenomenon; an uncanny ability; a prodigious gift…. A “fast and furious” genius….
    Indeed, coverups of coverups of coverups of coverups of….
    Massive and multi-dimensional. Beautifully crafted. Elegantly orchestrated. Profound and almost foolproof. Almost….
    Accompanied by cutouts and more cutouts and even more cutouts (on an international scale) –which almost reminds one of the massive and multi-dimensional fraud, e.g., “chain of custody” (or glaring lack thereof) of “ballots” in the November 2020 elections….

    “Biden” sure has a lot of crockery in the air at one time. The corrupt media had better get back on track as “Biden” could use all the help he can get. “He” needs them. Sorely needs them….

  14. “Indeed, coverups of coverups of coverups of coverups of….”

    The first lie is easy, but to maintain it against the truth exposed by ongoing reality requires more and more lies. It’s like that checkerboard problem, 1 grain of wheat on the 1st square, 2 on the 2nd, 4 on the 3rd, 8 on the 4th, eventually the whole edifice becomes unsustainable.

  15. Regarding the leaker’s motive, Reuters may lean left, but they are reputable in the same way that the New York Times is reputable (as opposed to avowedly partisan sources like the Nation or Vox). So a leaker might have chosen them as an outlet because of their broad reach, not because of some sort of ideological affinity.

  16. “…becomes unsustainable…”

    In theory, yes.

    However, the shameful, never-ending complicity and collusion of the corrupt, Orwellian media appears to have added a distinct “structural” strengthening element that keeps those lies flying and the coverups moving inexorably foreward…in spite of everything.

    File under: Con-torsion? Dis-torsion?

    …and here’s a sneak preview of the upcoming coverup: The robustness of “natural immunity” must be squelched at all costs (and its advocates/researchers canceled and driven from the public square as quickly and utterly as possible) because it destroys the official COVID Narrative(TM).
    https://fee.org/articles/harvard-epidemiologist-says-the-case-for-covid-vaccine-passports-was-just-demolished/

  19. Seems the idiots are going to get a real reminder why you don’t elect a dem for PotUS…

  20. Air power. It has been the secret sauce that has allowed small military units to handle the Taliban, ISIS, and other terror organizations. Most of Afghanistan where military units operate is open desert or bare mountainous terrain. Not much cover for those on the ground even while operating at night. There are many videos of helicopter gunships and C-130 gunships attacking jihadis in Afghanistan. It’s extremely effective. Like shooting ducks in a barrel. This was what the Afghan army had become dependent on. When the contractors who maintained the Afghan Air Force aircraft left and Joe refused to allow the U.S. military to provide air support, the die was cast. IMO, the military told Hoe what needed to be done. Joe was probably afraid they would get “bogged down” and wouldn’t meet his photo-op date of 9/11/21.

    The next act will be the drama of extracting more U.S. citizens and Afghani refugees from a country controlled by the Taliban. It may become similar t o the Iran hostage crisis of 1979. If so, Joe and the Dems have a PR problem of massive proportions coming up.

  22. y81,

    As actions speak louder than words, only the willfully blind imagine that the NYT is not an “avowedly partisan source”. They’ve been engaged in partisanship longer than anyone alive.

  24. And now Cocaine Mitch says there will be no Impeachment of Biden. Says the way to do it is at ballot box. So much different now, isn’t i.

  25. Well, in McConnell’s defense, with the House having a small Democrat majority and the Senate split evenly, with Harris the tie-breaker, there won’t be any impeachment. That’s just reality. Unless we imagine there are enough Democrats in the House with spines and minds to see what’s been going on.

  26. Geoffrey Britain: If you can’t tell the difference between the New York Times and the Nation, you have truly lost all sense of proportion. It’s like the people who say that there’s no difference between Sweden and Cuba, since they are both socialist.

  27. y81:

    I would say the Times and Nation are different but equally pernicious in different ways. In fact, I think the Times does far more damage. Although it’s true that now and then the Times writes something honest about the Democrats or the left, those times are very few and very far between. And they are outweighed entirely by the rest of the lies, including the lies about the right.What’s more, theTimes has a much wider circulation, and it rides on its unwarranted and outdated reputation for objectivity. Nation is known to be leftist, so it doesn’t fool anywhere near as many people.

  28. SHIREHOME:

    McConnell is stating the truth. The Democrats control both houses. They will never impeach Biden and there’s nothing MConnell can change about that.

    If the Democrats decide to remove Biden, they will use the 25th Amendment. I don’t think they’re removing him any time soon, though.

  29. y81,

    Does pretending to be something they’re not, change their actual nature? What might the editors of the Nation favor, that the editors of the NYT truly disfavor? Other than surprise, does a knife slashed across your throat from behind differ from your throat being slashed from the front?

    Look beneath the surface and in each you’ll find the same intent.

    The Nation is straightforward in its advocacy. The NYT pretends otherwise, the better to slip the knife into America’s back.

  30. McConnel is using the truth as an excuse to do nothing.

    Everyday, Congressional Republicans could en masse raise hell.

    When Pelosi denied the House Republicans their request to read the names of the Americans just murdered in Afghanistan, they all could have stood up and started yelling the names together.

    Every day they could publicly request that anyone knowing of an American stranded in Afghanistan provide the name to them and every day stand up and read the names on the floor and in multiple venues.

    Repeatedly call for Biden, Blinken, Austin and Milley’s resignation and keep calling for it.

    When Pelosi arrests every House Republican and throws them in the Capitol Police’s dungeon, then we shall know that they finally answered duty’s call. And if instead, House Republicans are barred from entrance, then one party governance will be undeniable and we can retire this charade.

    My God, the democrats are enabling the killing of Americans, how much worse does it have to get? What do they have to do before it’s too much? Maybe not till it gets personal?

  31. @GB:

    Democrats Shmemocrats!

    Meme-ocrats.

    You and the others here are going to have to learn to let go of the ‘Democrats’ / ‘Republicans’ soft toys you have chewed on all your adult lives.

    Copes for why this or that or all Republicans are supine or mute or sellouts are missing the point.

    You have a UniParty. It started out long ago in the mists of time as other things… but time does things… for example freezes one’s nomenclatures and mental maps in unnatural arrangements 😛 Bits of it get called this and that. And there are various factions. None of them have any interest in YOU. To the extent that you might think that this or that side is ‘less bad’ for you, you’re probably still wrong. Your UniParty doesn’t even govern. It is a partner in the corrupt business of running the State, but just a partner. It is largely staffed by puppets picked and paid for by various oligarchs.

    So wasting more than one or two breaths per day on this noxious Punch & Judy Show is just distracting everyone from the real issue which is: The Whole Thing Has to Go. And that’s a whole other kettle of fish — which might also partly explain why people cling so fondly to their Republicans / Democrats raft.

    Things are less bad at the State and local levels, so there might be value in making finer distinctions there… but it must be assumed, Moscow Rules-wise, that any Mister Smith having arrived in Washington is lost to the forces of darkness. You simply cannot get anywhere there without being compromised six ways from Sunday. That’s a feature, not a bug.

  32. There you go again Zaphod, misinterpreting what I’ve said.

    “McConnel is using the truth as an excuse to do nothing.”

    That is a criticism. Just a relative few Republicans are issuing ‘serious’ protests.

    “Everyday, Congressional Republicans could en masse raise hell.”

    Could but are not. Another criticism.

    I’m well aware of the ‘uniparty’ aspects of our political parties. Regardless, the Biden administration is calling the shots on what happens with the Taliban and are the ones directly responsible for this disaster. And they all vote democrat. There’s no ‘bipartisanship’ on this issue.

    Perhaps your offshore perspective prevents you from seeing deeper into American politics. Despite certain shared goals, there is a fundamental difference between the Republican Party and the Democrat Party.

    Republicans i.e. the GOPe desires ordinary Americans economic enslavement. But they could care less how we live our lives or what we think. Not so with the Democrats. Though they certainly do want our economic enslavement, they also want control of our hearts, minds and souls.

    It’s not the Republicans who are pushing thought crimes.

    I have long stated on this blog that, practically speaking the effective difference between the pubs and the rats is the speed with which they each march America toward the cliff’s edge.

    But understand that the pubs do not want America going over the cliff, they like their cozy little oligarchy. They’re just too shortsighted to see where cooperation with the dems leads.

    Whereas, the dems are composed of radicals and the old guard who retain their power through accomodating their radical base. They’re riding upon the tiger’s back and can’t safely get off. So, as moral cowards always do, they appease.

    So other than the usual, I do not expect anything from Congressional republicans. I also perceive the rot to be too deep and widespread for anything less than radical surgery. The West is suffering from a metastasized societal cancer that demands it be cut out.

    A prescription that would also entail untold suffering.

    So unless the democrats force rebellion upon us, America is going to stumble along till it collapses and then a new dark age will descend upon humanity.

  33. @GB:

    Correction accepted re misinterpreting you or putting words into your mouth. Apologies.

    Still think pointless to make any real distinction between Republicans and Democrats. Aiding and Abetting is still a crime.

    “So unless the democrats force rebellion upon us, America is going to stumble along till it collapses and then a new dark age will descend upon humanity.”

    — I’m supposed to hold the purple prose monopoly in these parts, if you don’t mind!

    I think you’ll find that humanity will muddle along OK without the United States of America. As David Goldman the eternal wandering you-know-who… oops I mean David Goldman the Spenglerian Polymath likes to say: “It’s not the End of the World: it’s just the End of You.”

    A thousand years hence, some Chinese on Mars will be composing calligraphic epigrams about your solipsism. Or mine. Or his own. Chinkybot *does* introspect, you know. He was doing so when your ancestors and mine were knocking each other over the head with clubs. Take the Long View. I do. It’s almost consoling 🙂

    Plus those Ineradicable Jews will have cornered the asteroid futures. Civilization will go on.

  34. Apology accepted.

    I’m sure. That for as long as you lasted, you’d find a world without America a living nightmare.

    1000 years ought to be just about right for coming out of that dark age. Gain some historical perspective on just how brutal and inhumane might makes right is when the law of the jungle dominates.

    Nor can what China, Iran, Pakistan, Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea and now Afghanistan have be called “civilization”. Since ‘civility’, civilization’s core value is decidedly lacking in their governance. There’s nothing ‘civilized’ about being told, “do as your told… or else” with the certainty of it being enforced.

    And David Goldman has never impressed. Knowledge, which he assuredly has is not wisdom nor astuteness. “Logic often but being wrong with confidence”. Logic utterly rests upon premise, its flaw its inability to examine its originating premise. Only resultant experience can examine premise.

  35. @GB:

    Whatever you do, definitely do not go read Archeofuturism 2.0 by Gillaume Faye — it’ll only cheer you up 😛

  37. We do not have a Uniparty, we have a Democratic Party, composed of traitorous anti-American PostModern Leftists out to destroy the West.

    We have a GOP which is two parts, about 50/50:

    RINOs, who are basically still PostModern Leftists, just not quite ready to destroy the West, but are happy to stand by and watch the Dems do it

    Actual Cons, including Trumpers, who are villified by all the rest and the merdia.

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