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Afghanistan's collapse: Did US intelligence get it wrong?
[ABCNEWS.GO] "[U.S.] leaders were told by the military it would take no time at all for the Taliban
...mindless ferocity in a turban...
 to take everything," an anonymous U.S. intelligence official told ABC News. "No one listened."

Among the intelligence that sources said was shared with the administration were claims that some members of Pakistain's intelligence services, who helped create and organize the Taliban 25 years ago, were supporting the Taliban over the summer. ABC News has seen evidence of Pak government ID cards found among deceased fighters, but could not verify their authenticity.
Other intelligence sources said that Biden and his team of advisers had reached their decision about the U.S. military's withdrawal -- which was all but completed on July 4 -- based on a variety of factors that went beyond Kabul's fate.

A senior congressional official who asked not to be named in order to discuss sensitive briefings told ABC News that intelligence officers had warned the U.S. leaders about a swift and total victory by the fundamentalist Talibs who had held power in Kabul during the late 1990s up until after the Sept. 11 attacks.

"The intelligence community assessment has always been accurate; they just disregarded it," the official told ABC News, speaking about the Biden administration, the same old faces in slightly different places, the same old ideas, the same old graft
...knaves, footpads, and adjusters employed by the Biden Crime Family. They leave a trail of havoc everywhere they turn their attention, be it the nation's borders, the Keystone XL Pipeline, or epidemics, sometimes on purpose, most times through sheer arrogant ineptitude. They learnt this stuff in college, you know...
Among the intelligence that sources said was shared with the administration were claims that some members of Pakistain's intelligence services, who helped create and organize the Taliban 25 years ago, were supporting the Taliban over the summer. ABC News has seen evidence of Pak government ID cards found among deceased fighters, but could not verify their authenticity.

Appearing on ABC's "This Week" on Sunday morning, U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken mostly dodged questions about the administration's miscalculations, insisting that "this is manifestly not Saigon" -- even as live video from Kabul showed helicopters ferrying American officials out of the U.S. embassy compound to the military side of Kabul's airport.

Blinken had said for months that such a collapse was possible, but highly unlikely. Pressed in June by Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Tex.) during a Foreign Affairs Committee oversight hearing on the growing crisis, Blinken said, "I don't think it's going to be something that happens from a Friday to a Monday. I wouldn't necessarily equate the departure of our forces in July, August or by early September with some kind of immediate deterioration in the situation."

In May, the U.S. special envoy leading talks with the Taliban leadership in Doha, Qatar
...an emirate on the east coast of the Arabian Peninsula. It sits on some really productive gas and oil deposits, which produces the highest per capita income in the world. They piss it all away on religion, financing the Moslem Brotherhood and several al-Qaeda affiliates. Home of nutbag holy manYusuf al-Qaradawi...
, had also told the House committee that fears about a total fall of the Afghan government were misplaced.

"I personally believe that the predictions that the Afghan forces will collapse right away -- they are not right," said Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad. "We will help, we are helping them now. We will help them. This is our commitment."

Now, thousands of Afghans who worked for the U.S. military or fought side-by-side with American forces -- including those still in the pipeline for special immigrant visas -- fear Taliban reprisals in occupied cities such as Kabul.
Posted by: Fred 2021-08-17
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=610021