Taliban fighters upset, feel betrayed that US military left non-working helicopters: report
By: Greg Norman (MSN)
Awwwwww. /s
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Taliban fighters are feeling angry and betrayed Wednesday after discovering that Afghan National Army helicopters abandoned at Kabul's airport have been rendered inoperable by departing U.S. troops, according to a report.
An Al Jazeera reporter who toured a hanger on the military side of the airport said in a video that the terrorist group "expected the Americans to leave helicopters like this in one piece for their use."
"When I said to them, 'why do you think that the Americans would have left everything operational for you'? They said because we believe it is a national asset and we are the government now and this could have come to great use for us," she continued.
© WAKIL KOHSAR/AFP via Getty Images A Taliban member looks up near a damaged helicopter at the airport in Kabul on Tuesday. AFP via Getty Images
A U.S. Department of Defense spokesperson told Fox News on Wednesday that "we disabled/demilitarized that equipment at Hamid Karzai International Airport prior to our departure."
Meanwhile, the Taliban are hoping to get the commercial side of the airport reopened for flights in the coming days, Al Jazeera reports.
The flight carrying the last American soldier departed Afghanistan on Monday afternoon, marking an end to a nearly 20-year U.S. military presence inside the country.
"There's a lot of heartbreak associated with this departure," CENTCOM Commander Gen. Kenneth McKenzie said of the closing down of evacuation operations. He acknowledged, "We did not get everybody out that we wanted to get out."
In addition to the people left behind in Kabul, McKenzie said the U.S. also left behind equipment such as the C-RAM (counter-artillery, artillery and mortar) system that was used to shoot down rockets, as well as dozens of armored Humvees and some aircraft.
The general added that the equipment had been disabled and in the end none of it was mission capable.
Fox News' Michael Lee contributed to this report.
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Betrayed cuz we didn't leave you good stuff?
I feel your pain................. NOT
See? It never was as bad as rightwingers acted...
Do you honestly think that what was at the airport was all that was left?
I think we were always planning to leave a lot of shit behind. It was always going to end badly...
"WE" had too much confidence in the Afghan "security" forces being able to stave off the Taliban and USE what was left for that cause. After all, I think that was the plan was to have them take the initiative to fight. Guess "we" didn't learn much in Iraq.
Pretty sure there was stuff scattered all over the country. No different than stuff left behind in Vietnam.
Doesn't the military try to render it useless when they leave it behind?
They only did that with the equipment at the airport the last I knew
Only the material we had control over.
The equipment at Kandahr and a little bit at Bagram was gifted to the Afghanis
So the Blackhawks at Kandahar were functional. The Taliban wrecked several trying to fly one.
The New York Post had video of one being taxiied in circles at Kandahar.
Yesterday they had a parade of "captured" police vehicles and MWRAPS with one Blackhawk flying.
If they wreck them they are unusable. And I doubt if the Taliban have qualified mechanics on hand
That is protocol, but it doesn't always work out that way.
it would have been fun to watch some videos of a few terrorists trying to learn how to fly them.
JBB wrote: "It was always going to end badly..."
Bumbling Biden made sure of that!
Flying is much easier than landing.
Learning is an acute stress test.
Once had a chopper pilot friend tell me that hard/crash landings are not the problem. It's that sudden loss of momentum at the end!
See it is never as benign as the left acted...
They managed to disable the helicopters at Karzai Airport. Too bad they didn't do that with the military hardware in the rest of the country. Of course anything done right, no matter how small or standard procedure, is a victory for the the hapless Biden administration.
WTF? Not bad?
Leaving all that weaponry to our enemy, regardless of condition, wasn't that bad?
Wow!
I looked for the satire tag....
MSN and FNC don't publish "satire" but it's not surprising that Biden's terrorists would be pissed off!
this comment is a joke for the humor impaired and the sticks up the butt people
good thing you explained it for them...
Now this is encouraging news!
Just breaks my heart that the Taliban feel that way. NOOOTTT!
Willfully giving thousands of Americans, journalists, students, translators, allies, and their families to Islamic terrorist tribes to use as their hostages is well beyond "heartbreaking".
I sincerely hope someone thought to pour sand in the oil and hydraulic reservoirs of the vehicles and aircraft left behind. I can just imagine the look on a Taliban pilot's face as the engine on a helo he is trying to fly seizes inflight for no apparent reason.
Fortunately most of that equipment is very maintenance intensive. Only way they maintain it is if countries like Russian or China help them.
I worry more about the man portable stuff, missiles and anti air batteries etc. Pretty easy to demil but did they demil it?
I hope so.
This part really cracks me up. Many liberals don't want law abiding Americans to have evil black guns but you hear very little bitching about the thousands, maybe millions of them that were left to the Taliban
Bad dream .......
Helicopters should have all left Afghanistan the same way they came in.
Yep. Disassembled and in the back of a C-5, C-17, or C-130.