ClearedHot

Latest reports say it is even worse at Kabul. Last night the Dept of State warned all Americans to leave the gate areas immediately due to an imminent threat. That threat warning was corroborated by multiple other nations early this morning and is ongoing. As of this morning they are only letting AMCITs in the gate, NO MORE SIV even if previously approved and a green card issued. Support agencies have been told ops stop at midnight and military forces will begin their evac to meet the Taliban Aug 31 deadline. Canada Govt initially said they would stay past Aug 31 if security allowed, have now decided to leave immediately. Last Canadian Evac flight leaves in a few hours. SIV holders have been advised to head for Uzbeck border, Pak border or Panjshir region to link with resistance forces.

At least our allies still have some stones! We look like stooges. Elite SAS troops rescued in dramatic desert operation

I don't want Trump to run again. I think if the election were held today the DNC would take an ass whipping based on what is happening...and it is going to get worse, a LOT worse. They just had a Senate Staff call and they accidentally released the number 4100....4100 Americans stranded on the other side of the Taliban checkpoints. They tried to retract the statement saying it might not be accurate. If we leave on the 31st and there are American left behind that will be a memory that can outlast even the ADHD of most Americas and the news cycle. It will most certainly be a landslide at the midterm. I live in Florida and support most of what Desantis has done, our economy is booming. I would like to see a more measured approach to COVID but we will see how it plays out. At this point I think the GOP ticket will be Desantis and Haley.

Understood...that is what I think will be some unresolved legal ground.

This should be different from the Anthrax fight. I understand the military has the authority now that the vaccine is approved but there are some serious issues that need to be addressed. What if a person has already had COVID and has natural immunity? I am sure there will be some who stand on principle and it will lead to some court cases...sadly those members will sacrifice their careers regardless of the ultimate outcome.

Let me see if I can get another down vote from Nuke. I truly don't understand how anyone can be happy with the way Biden is handling this debacle. It is now being reported he has been spending a LARGE amount of his time calling other Democrats trying to get support for his $5T spending plan. In what universe do you put a priority on a non-emergency spending plan instead of giving 100% of your time as the Commander in Chief focused on bringing Americans home? Not just SIV afghans but AMERICANS. Complete fail.

There is no doubt in my mind that the spin machine will twist this into several BPZ promotions.

Yes "unvaccinated." Fixed in post. Yes "comorbidities". Fixed in post. Spelled it right the first few times but spell check doesn't know the word.

@brabus I understand what you are saying but I don't think it survives contact with our current reality. The problem is how do you PID all the high risk people. We still don't know why but the virus can have a severe impact on people who would seemingly have zero risk. I have no comorbidities and brother it humbled me. My COVID experience was crazy. I had a low grade fever and some intestinal issues on Christmas Eve. Christmas day I actually felt better. I had flown my family up to DC in my plane and my annual was going to expire on the 31st so the morning of the 26th I did a self-assessment and decided to fly home...no fever...no other symptoms except fatigue. I stopped in Georgia for gas and grabbed the courtesy car to go grab some lunch. I made it to the main road and something told me to just head back to the plane and get home. Still minus symptoms I took some preventative Tylenol, gassed up and took off for Florida. I landed, taxied to my hangar, backed my truck out of the hangar to load it and WHAM it hit me like a ton of bricks. Big fever spike, aches, chills...all at once, I almost called a friend to put my plane away for me. Thank god it didn't happen in flight. I felt like shit for about five days and started to feel better, you know the feeling when you have the flu and can tell you are on the backside...that is how I felt. I went to bed thinking a good nights sleep and I would be better...the next morning it came roaring back even worse than before. My family was still in DC and they all had it. Both my mother in law and father in law ended up in the hospital...My mother in law was given, steroids, breathing treatments, Remdesivir and LAST RITES. The doctor literally said "there is nothing else we can do and her infection numbers are still going up." Thankfully she turned the corner the next day. Eight months later my father in law still feels the effects. He has comorbidities , she does not other than being in her 70's (very fit and active). I was home alone and kept getting worse...my best friends were checking in and bringing me food but man it sucked. My pulseox actually went below 90 and at the insistence of my sister who is a nurse, I asked for help...the response from the Military doctor was "take Motrin and cough drops." Thank god for my sister who did a conference call from Massachusetts and let the doctor have it. "He needs steroids NOW!" The doctor was an asshole and replied "using what rationale"...she again unloaded on the doctor and mentioned the hundreds of COVID patients she had been treating..."His pulseox is below 90%, his lungs are swollen, he needs help NOW!" The doctor changed her tune and prescribed steroids. I picked them up an hour later and within 30 minutes of taking the first pill I knew it was the magic pill! My pulseox jumped to 94% and I started what would be a 12 week recovery. I had a follow up with that doctor who said "Wow, great to know the steroids work, you were my first COVID patient." I am a retired dude but after the fact I called the Med Group/CC and filed an official complaint...which I understand they did take seriously. I have a great friend from High School who is a PhD Nurse in Miami...one of the hot spots. The stories she tells are horrifying...truly horrifying. She is in the middle of the second wave right now and almost all of the patients are unvaccinated and a surprising number have no comorbidites. I've talked to her many times because I truly wondered about the vaccine and the conditions at ground zero. She keeps saying they all wish they had gotten the vaccine. I have another friend form high school and her 26 year old son has been in the hospital for 10 days...dude has no comorbidities and is an ultra-marathoner...no vaccine. I have a few rental properties, one of my tenants just spent two weeks in the hospital and is now home on oxygen. He is 32, no commodities and is again very active and fit...no vaccine. My sampling is not scientific but it is enough for me to realize there is still much we don't know. Again, I think people have a choice but given all I've seen and heard I hope they get the vaccine.

I am most certainly not an immunologist but I did see a story using this very argument. The immunologist they were interviewing noted that part of the problem is the unvaccinated population in below herd immunity level so the virus continues to mutate, which lowers the effectiveness of the current vaccines. If our population was indeed at herd immunity then mutations would be far less likely and those that are vaccinated would be far more effective at fighting even asymptomatic infections....thus reducing the spread.

After the Taliban said they would not accept an extension of the August 31 Deadline, President Biden announced he will not extend our presence beyond Aug 31. Even Pentagon Spokesman Baghdad Kirby stated it will take days (72 hours), to extract all U.S. forces. Realistically that means this thing starts to get even more ugly in 2-3 days. AND....The Taliban have now said it is no longer safe for Afghans to leave the country, they need the engineers and professionals to help rebuild the country. Let the massacre ensue. FINALLY...there is an intelligence paper with credible sources that says the Taliban and Al Qaeda plan to launch an attack on the Kabul airport. This should bring down the administration.

True, but at least with my airplane, I get to decide who gets inside her. The price for such control...

Here is what gets me. The Trump supporters were so proud and quick to tout him for operation Warp Speed...he actually got the vaccine done in record time. Now that Biden is in power and asking people to get vaccinated the same Trump supporters think the vaccine is the equivalent to getting a chip implanted in their brain. Even though there is case law that supports mandatory vaccines for all (Jacobson v. Massachusetts), I am all about free will and choice. There is a difference for the military...Ironically taking that oath to serve and protect the Constitution gave up all sorts of Constitutional rights. If the vaccine is legally approved there is little resistance ground to stand on. I think there most certainly should be further discussion and research on those who have already had COVID. Having had a nasty fight with COVID....vaccinated or non-vaccinated, I hope you don't get it.

Ammo prices were finally starting to come down...another year of Chaos.

Might need a bit of deconfliction and I would be careful who we strike there. The Taliban are going because Ahmad Massoud, (son of Ahmad Shah Massoud “Lion of the Panjshir"), has established a serious resistance threat. If you know the history his father was a legendary Anti-soviet guerilla fighter/leader who also hated and resisted the Taliban. He successfully defended the Panjshir Valley against the Soviets and Taliban. He was assassinated two days before the planes hit the tower and may well have shaped a different outcome in Afghanistan had he survived. Regardless, his son is the only one who can mount a serious internal challenge to the Taliban. Like his father he is highly educated (secondary school education in Iran, time at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst (Britain's West Point), Bachelors Degree in war studies from King's College London and a Master's Degree in international Politics form University of London. This will be the only serious challenge to the Taliban and they have a lot of backing from more moderate sympathizers in Europe.

I take it you haven't been there? Not a snide comment but if you've spent anytime in country then you have a better optic for all various groups and folks operating there. I have not seen the number 15,000 confirmed but from some of the articles I've read they are mixture of different folks and different reasons. First and foremost, there are MANY NGOs that have been working in Afghanistan for years. At one point there were 298 Afghan and 182 International NGOs working in Afghanistan. There are also dual-citizens and American family members who were there helping family and with businesses. There are VAST resources of some key minerals like Lithium so I would assume some of them were working for the various businesses in country. What is so asinine is things have been relatively quiet as compared to years past. The last U.S. combat death in country was almost 18 months ago. Was this a function of the Taliban waiting foe us to leave after the Trump deal or were things better...I do not know. What is certain is once we started to run the Taliban became EXTREMELY aggressive.

Posted multiple times and discussed on last page of this thread.

Private groups now attempting to do what the U.S. Government cant...or won't.

Standby for complete pandemonium...The gates are again closed and the Taliban are seizing American passports. What are the clowns running the White House and DoD doing? https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/08/21/kabul-airport-gates-closed-taliban-confiscating-u-s-passports/?fbclid=IwAR331nOgsb_2x0G67TWEB67Ydn8NEXgcVC2T1mTEXYzO6anf_r_MvvFLEXw

So these assholes decided to don American gear and recreate the infamous Iwo Jima flag raising to rub our noses in it. At least we don't have mean tweets anymore...well, except from the Taliban...their Twitter account remains active and approved while a former POTUS is permanently banned...this situation has become Orwellian

Anyone else see the irony of Kamala leaving for Vietnam today? Is she going to Saigon to bring back some DLOs on that evac so we can do better in Afghanistan? The optics are simply surreal.

Horrifying video reportedly shows Afghan police chief executed by Taliban But Biden said the Taliban promised amnesty...Why would anyone ever trust us again?

We have become a joke on the world stage.