Biden administration removed lists of U.S. military gear in Afghanistan
Category: News & Politics
Via: vic-eldred • 3 years ago • 31 commentsBy: Ben Wolfgang (The Washington Times)
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
The Biden administration two weeks ago removed online reports that provided key details on the U.S. military equipment provided to Afghan security forces over the past 20 years, some of which has found its way into Taliban hands after the abrupt American withdrawal from the country last month.
Officials with the Government Accountability Office confirmed Wednesday that they took down roughly 400 studies relating to Afghanistan , including a 2017 document that provided a comprehensive list of American military gear given to Afghan security forces up until that point. GAO officials said the removal came at the direct request of the State Department, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Washington Times.
The reports were removed, officials said, out of fear that they could be used by Afghanistan ‘s new leaders to identify Afghans who had supported the U.S. war effort and target them for revenge attacks.
“Given ongoing events in Afghanistan , the State Department requested we temporarily remove and review reports on Afghanistan to protect recipients of U.S. assistance that may be identified through our reports and thus subject to retribution,” the GAO said in a statement to The Times. “We did so out of an abundance of caution” about Aug. 16, a day after the U.S.-backed government in Kabul fell to the Taliban .
GAO officials said that of those 400 reports initially removed, about 300 have been reviewed and are back online. But the 2017 study detailing all of the equipment given to Afghan forces remains under review, as do about 75 other documents related to Afghanistan , according to the GAO.
Over the past 20 years, the U.S. provided more than $82 billion in arms and training to the Afghan forces, which quickly folded in the face of a major Taliban military offensive last month.
Watchdog groups have accused the Biden administration of trying to hide the extent of U.S. weapons, vehicles and equipment now in the hands of the Taliban .
“The war in Afghanistan has always been a black box, but now we’ve reached an entirely new level,” Adam Andrzejewski, CEO of the watchdog group Open the Books, said in a statement Wednesday. “Biden officials recently directed U.S. federal agencies to scrub their websites of official reports detailing the $82.9 billion in military equipment and training provided to the Afghan security forces since 2001.”
The Taliban on Wednesday held a victory parade, showing off much of the U.S. gear it has acquired over the past several weeks.
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More damage control submitted here at the shrine of damage control.
This is another area where I am surprised that our military ops did not have a contingency plan for the equipment and supplies. I find that next to impossible to believe given contingency planning is core to the military. And this is very important since the last thing one wanted was to arm and supply the Taliban.
There needs to be a full investigation from the top down of the Biden administration, the Pentagon, and CIA (all of the lack of intelligence agencies for that matter). The amount of ineptitude with the withdrawal and evacuation is staggering.
But it seems as if the Biden administration and Democrats have no interest in investigations. They are now flipping the script saying "There was no other way to do it; and bragging about "how many people were air lifted out of the country, and no other country in the world could have done it." Forget the fact that the vast majority of those evacuated were not US citizens (who knows how many are still in Afghanistan- don't ask the Biden administration- they don't know and have no plan for getting them out anyways; or the Afghans that aided us (thousands still stranded and being hunted by the Taliban).
Perhaps they did. Maybe they were faced with a hard time deadline for getting troops out and didn't even have time to transport all that equipment.
Investigation or not (and most likely not) Biden and his handlers are not going to just walk away from this. God only knows what comes next.
Does not sound like our military.
Transporting the equipment is not the only option. It can be destroyed.
Of course not. No administration wants investigations of its inner workings.
The stats I saw were 6,000 US citizens as of July and less than 200 of them remain. Do you have different stats?
Greg, the ” button in the upper left hand corner is a toggle. You can click on the lower paragraph and unquote it. Your comment looks as though it is simply two quotes.
Does that sound like the USA military to you?
No. The no mainly pertains to the lower ranks. I'm no longer sure of the flag officers.
Transporting the equipment is not the only option. It can be destroyed.
Destroying is preferable to allowing the Taliban to have it.
Armchair Generals always get it all right...
Of course, so the question (still) is why this was not done.
Even they could have done better
So think it was a choice?
We are asking questions JBB. There were options on the table yet our military took an unusual turn by leaving operational and saleable equipment and supplies behind.
Aren't you curious as to why?
Of course it was a choice. Hard to imagine that the US military did not have alternate scenarios they could have pursued. Given it is likely that they knew the weakness of the Afghan army they could have taken preemptive measures to ensure the equipment and supplies are located and ready to be transported or destroyed.
Any thoughts on why such a decision would be made?
No. This is one of several factors that have bothered me the entire time.
Trouble is, when I write of this the partisans jump in and spend their time trying to make it strictly an indictment of Biden. No way to have a conversation with those with a single-minded partisan objective.
I suspect we will never know what caused the Afghanistan withdrawal mission to proceed as it did.
The Biden Administration has been offering contradictory numbers between Milley, Blinken, and Biden since the start of the evacuation. I don't think they know how many US citizens are left; they are just guessing based on the number of requests they had for evacuation as compared to the number they know got out. The Taliban weren't stupid, they destroyed the cell towers in many parts of the country- effectively cutting off communication in those areas.
Biden is assuming that any US citizen that doesn't contact the embassy in Afghanistan doesn't want to get out; not that they couldn't because the towers were down; and they couldn't reach Kabul due to Taliban checkpoints, and areas controlled by Al Qaeda, ISIS/ISIL, and ISIS-K.
Sorry, I don't trust their numbers. They are guessing; and I think very low on purpose- in order to make it easier on themselves. The real numbers they abandoned in Afghanistan may take years to figure out.
If you reject all stats then how do you form an opinion one way or the other? All you could state is: ‘I have no idea’.
I will go with the reported stats as being more accurate than ‘I have no idea’.
Cannot have the Biden administration embarrassing themselves more than they already have, can we?
Once they tried to use the Intelligence agencies they were done. The leaks will just keep coming.
As more of these tidbits emerge it's becoming more evident that the Biden administration is just making things up as they go. Apparently none of this was planned so there's a scurry to react after the fact.
The situation in Afghanistan was known, there weren't any surprises here. Planning for the best scenario while ignoring the worst scenario isn't the way to do things. If the Biden administration can't handle a known and controllable situation then how will the Biden administration respond to a real emergency?
The rational conclusion to be drawn from what happened in Afghanistan is 'we're so screwed'.
"As more of these tidbits emerge it's becoming more evident that the Biden administration is just making things up as they go. Apparently none of this was planned so there's a scurry to react after the fact."
Nah, that would be the former criminal enterprise of an 'administration'. #45
Joe Biden has successfully kicked Orange Man Bad off the news cycle.
And kept the military rank & file & their families voting REPUBLICAN!
Who cares? The only people in the military that matter are dead Marines. And the dead vote Democrat, don't they?
It's always interesting how other branches of the service are listed with an 'and'. As if they just tag along to support the Marines.
Nah!
Always
It's always interesting how other branches of the service are listed with an 'and'. As if they just tag along to support the Marines.
The Marines were once thought of as strictly an offensive force, which is so strange that they would be given missions like occupying an airport.
The Marine Corps is searching for relevance in a battle environment. Joe Biden can relate.
Continued planning for amphibious assault may provide clues to military planning in Afghanistan. We're still trying to fight the wrong war. The Afghanistan withdrawal plan might have worked pretty well in Eastern Europe. But to our political and military planners the Asian theater appears to be inscrutable. We've been sucked into a NATO trap.
Joe Biden is even attempting to deal with the Taliban as if they were Eastern Europeans. None of our planners seem to take into account that the Taliban aren't fighting to win. The Taliban fight so we lose. Our loss is their victory and they have the patience to allow us to defeat ourselves. Joe Biden doesn't get it. Our diplomatic and military planners don't get it. And their planning shows that.
I see no justification for leaving people or material behind. If we were leaving of our own accord, and not being forced out, then we should have had full control over the process. We are entirely responsible for anyone or anything that was left behind.