fuzzy on numbers of people in Afghanistan, punted to State
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its a hash basically just waiting for commentary about Taiwan / Korea
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guess this dude has a reputationhttps://twitter.com/TeddyRaccovelt/status/1427715742368256002?s=19 …
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hopped in late to a Pentagon briefing "why didnt you keep bagram running" "we decided to collapse bagram instead of abandoning the embassy for tactical reasons given our mission set with the constraint of reducing troops"
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"are you thinking of retaking bagram" "good question but I won't discuss here"
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"if you have a deconfliction process with the Taliban why cant you get afghans past the checkpoints" "we're emphasizing that they need to let documented afghans through. right now we see our chokepoint as moving once they get to the airport. but yes there have been incidents"
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by which I mean now opens by stating current focus of defense is keeping airport running securely, also increasing pace. flown out several thousand since early August, working to increase the rate "working with State to process paperwork"
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joint chiefs of staff chair has incredibly bushy eyebrows. one eyebrow hair is out of place and hanging over his right eye. v distracting "we/l have some brutal postmortems but right now our priority is evacuating Americans and ppl who supported us. will not leave them."
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"if we identify threats to the airport we will respond militarily and every organization in the country is aware of this"
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"intelligence identified multiple scenarios including this one. but we did not anticipate a collapse in 11 days. [shortest estimate was "weeks"]
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"evacuating the afghans who supported us for twenty years is /personal/ and we're going to get them out."
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confirmation that special forces are operating somewhere, not sure whether this is surprising or whether this means anything
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chairman once more emphasizing that this is Personal. he seems fairly pissed in a marginally restrained way
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first question "are you considering sending troops to escort people to the airport to handle checkpoints" "we're focused on airfield security. we have to be able to defend it from some specific threats. we'll continue to coordinate with Taliban" oof
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"how are you going to get everyone out of the country. tons of Americans arent even in Kabul dude" "we're just working with Taliban atm. we have the capability to do other things. this would be a policy decision and we will follow policy"
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"we dont have the capability to collect large numbers of people. this is different than small numbers of people in extremis" hmm
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"at what point do you start pulling out american capacity" "great question. before we started. so, we have to develop a detailed plan. weve been thinking about this for a while and continue to think about them" ok thats not an answer
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related, claim, ht
@DRO_oDRhttps://twitter.com/alexplitsas/status/1427733054114648074?s=19 …Show this thread -
"seems like you have three choices. 1. expand outside airport 2. extend 8/31 deadline 3. abandon a ton of people which is it gonna be" "were focused on the airfield" "that doesnt answer the question" "were gonna do what we can" "so the plan is 'trust the taliban?'"
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all right thats back to where I jumped in will update with new press conferences as they occur so that u dont have to watch them
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pulled up some video on CNN, they have someone going around outside the airport in a scarf interviewing people. incredibly ballsy
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i dont usually watch video reporting but i am glad I did here because my god does it put the lie to this garbage massive crowds of afghans speaking English and flashing their documents to the cameras they cant get in this is publicly available infohttps://twitter.com/eigenrobot/status/1428092878824243201?s=19 …
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so yes it seems that everyone is continuing to lie to our faces and i was somehow still insufficiently cynical I have no idea what their game is keep kicking the can until 9/1 and then WHAT? what the fuck do they think will happen then?!
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apparently we dont even control the airport anymore, ht
this uh doesnt seem stablehttps://twitter.com/IanPannell/status/1428106765057593349?s=19 …Show this thread -
Biden gave an interview to ABC, will view once I find a copy of the video
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End of conversation
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