\n
Milley moves up terror threat to US after Taliban\u2019s gains in Afghanistan.<\/a><\/p>\n The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told senators on Sunday that he will move up the assessment of how soon terror groups like al-Qaeda could reform in\u00a0Afghanistan<\/a>\u00a0in the wake of the Taliban\u2019s swift takeover of the war-torn nation, according to a report.<\/p>\n During a \u200bbriefing for a bipartisan group of lawmakers, Gen. Mark Milley was asked by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) if he and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin would revise an assessment to Congress in June that there is a \u201cmedium\u201d risk of terrorist organizations reconstituting in Afghanistan in less than two years.<\/p>\n \u200b\u201dYes,\u201d Milley replied, adding that he would be happy to brief the senators further in a classified setting,\u00a0Axios reported<\/a>, citing three sources on the phone call.<\/p>\n The US and its\u00a0allies launched the war in Afghanistan in October 2001 because the Taliban provided al-Qaeda support and safe\u00a0harbor while the terror group planned the 9\/11 attacks.<\/p>\n The briefing by Milley, Austin and Secretary of State Antony Blinken came amid rapid developments in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n The US military used helicopters to ferry diplomats and staffers from the US Embassy in Kabul after the Taliban entered the capital city on Sunday, catching the Biden administration flat-footed with their dizzying advance.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Shortly after the\u00a0insurgent group entered the city,\u00a0Afghan President Ashraf Ghani<\/a>\u00a0fled the country.<\/p>\n As the trio of administration officials briefed them, many of the senators were getting real-time updates of the deteriorating situation on their cell phones, the report said.<\/p>\n In a briefing for House members, Republican leader Kevin McCarthy compared the US\u2019s evacuation of the embassy in Kabul to Saigon in 1975 and blasted Ghani for running.<\/p>\n \u201cI have passion and I have anger. I want to know where President Ghani is,\u201d McCarthy said on the call,\u00a0according to Politico<\/a>.<\/a><\/p>\n At the briefings, lawmakers pressed the administration on efforts to evacuate the thousands of Afghans who worked with the US military during the 20-year war to protect them from reprisals by the Taliban.<\/p>\n Politico reported that one source said it\u2019s unlikely that the more than 20,000 Afghans who want to flee can do so by the Aug. 31 withdrawal deadline because the Taliban controls so much territory.<\/p>\n The person \u200bpointed out that many of them aren\u2019t in Kabul, adding that \u201cif you\u2019re not in Kabul now, how do you get to Kabul?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cTwo takeaways for me,\u201d the source said. \u201cWe\u2019re going to leave tens of thousands of people behind \u2026 and the timeline in terms of threats has accelerated.\u201d\u200b<\/p>\n Blinken \u200bnoted that the administration\u2019s hands were tied to pull out troops because of the May 1 timetable the Trump administration negotiated with the Taliban \u2014 a deadline President Biden extended to Aug. 31.<\/p>\n Austin said the Pentagon has expected a \u201cnumber of potential outcomes,\u201d but the \u201clack of resistance that the Taliban faced from Afghan forces has been extremely disconcerting,\u201d Politico reported.<\/p>\n \u201cThey had all the advantages, they had 20 years of training by our coalition forces, a modern air force, good equipment and weapons,\u201d\u00a0\u200bAustin said on the call.<\/p>\n \u201cBut you can\u2019t buy will and you can\u2019t purchase leadership. And that\u2019s really what was missing in this situation.\u200b\u201d<\/p>\n Biden, sp\u200beaking to reporters in July at the\u00a0White House\u00a0<\/a>to announce the Aug. 31 deadline, dismissed the idea that it is\u00a0\u201cinevitable\u201d that the Taliban would overrun the country once US forces depart.<\/p>\n \u201cBecause you \u2014 the Afghan troops have 300,000 well-equipped \u2014 as well-equipped as any army in the world \u2014 and an air force against something like 75,000 Taliban. It is not inevitable\u200b,\u201d he said.\u00a0\u200b<\/p>\n Reporters also grilled the president on the intelligence community\u2019s assessment that the Afghan government would collapse without the support of the US military.<\/p>\n \u201cThat is not true.\u00a0They did not reach that conclusion, Biden said.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Afghan government and leadership has to come together. They clearly have the capacity to sustain the government in place. The question is: Will they generate the kind of cohesion to do it? It\u2019s not a question of whether they have the capacity. They have the capacity. They have the forces. They have the equipment. The question is: Will they do it?\u201d he continued.<\/p>\n The president said the US would continue to back the government during the drawdown, \u201cbut\u00a0there\u2019s not a conclusion that, in fact, they cannot defeat the Taliban.\u201d<\/p>\n At the time, he also rejected any comparisons between the Afghanistan withdrawal and the US pullout of Vietnam.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Taliban is not the North Vietnamese army. They\u2019re not remotely comparable in terms of capability. There\u2019s going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy. It is not at all comparable,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Quote O’ The Day: He should have spent more time fighting the taliban and less time fighting Tucker Carlson. Milley moves up terror threat to US after Taliban\u2019s gains in Afghanistan. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told senators on Sunday that he will move up the assessment of how soon terror groups … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-70878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crap-for-brains","category-military"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=70878"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70878\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":70879,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70878\/revisions\/70879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=70878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=70878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=70878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Taliban](\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2021\/08\/Afghanistan-17.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1024\")
![\"Taliban](\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2021\/08\/Afghanistan-2-4.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1024\")