U.S. soldiers at Bagram air base in Afghanistan. [Source: nytimes.com]

By Jeremy Kuzmarov

Special Forces, Pentagon Contractors and Intelligence Operatives Will Remain

On Wednesday April 14^th, President Joe Biden announced that he would end the U.S.’s longest war and withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan on the 20^th anniversary of the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks.

Over 6,000 NATO troops will also be withdrawn by that time.

“War in Afghanistan was never meant to be a multigenerational undertaking,” Biden said during his remarks from the White House Treaty Room, the same location from which President George W. Bush had announced the war was beginning in October 2001. “We were attacked. We went to war with clear goals. We achieved those objectives. Bin Laden is dead and al Qaeda is degraded in Afghanistan and it’s time to end the forever war.”

Biden’s claim that he is ending the forever war is misleading. As The New York Times reported, the United States would remain after the formal departure of U.S. troops with a “shadowy combination of clandestine Special Operations Forces, Pentagon contractors and covert intelligence operatives.”

Their mission will be to “find and attack the most dangerous Qaeda or Islamic state threats, current and former American officials said.”^[1]

The Times further reported that the United States maintains a constellation of air bases in the Persian Gulf region as well as in Jordan, and a major air headquarters in Qatar, which could provide a launching pad for long-range bomber or armed drone missions into Afghanistan.^[2]

Matthew Hoh, a disabled combat veteran who resigned from the State Department in 2009 in protest of the war, stated that a genuine peace process in Afghanistan is “dependent upon foreign forces leaving Afghanistan.”

Further, Hoh said that “Regardless of whether the 3500 acknowledged U.S. troops leave Afghanistan, the U.S. military will still be present in the form of thousands of special operations and CIA personnel in and around Afghanistan, through dozens of squadrons of manned attack aircraft and drones stationed on land bases and on aircraft carriers in the region, and by hundreds of cruise missiles on ships and submarines.”

Mercenaries R Us

The meaninglessness of President Biden’s announcement becomes apparent when we consider that the Pentagon employs more than seven contractors for every serviceman or woman in Afghanistan; an increase of one contractor for every serviceman or woman a decade ago.

[…]

Via https://libya360.wordpress.com/2021/04/15/bidens-claim-to-be-ending-americas-longest-war-misleading/

By Caitlin Johnstone

Back in the good old days, when things were more innocent and simple, the psychopathic Central Intelligence Agency had to covertly infiltrate the news media to manipulate the information Americans were consuming about their nation and the world. Nowadays, there is no meaningful separation between the news media and the CIA at all.

Journalist Glenn Greenwald just highlighted an interesting point about the reporting by The New York Times on the so-called  “Bountygate” story the outlet broke in June of last year about the Russian government trying to pay Taliban-linked fighters to attack US soldiers in Afghanistan.

“One of the NYT reporters who originally broke the Russia bounty story (originally attributed to unnamed ‘intelligence officials’) say today that it was a CIA claim,” Greenwald tweeted. “So media outlets – again – repeated CIA stories with no questioning: congrats to all.”

Indeed, NYT’s original story made no mention of CIA involvement in the narrative, citing only “officials,” yet this latest article speaks as though it had been informing its readers of the story’s roots in the lying, torturing, drug-running, warmongering Central Intelligence Agency from the very beginning. The author even writes “The New York Times first reported last summer the existence of the C.I.A.’s assessment,” with the hyperlink leading to the initial article which made no mention of the CIA. It wasn’t until later that The New York Times began reporting that the CIA was looking into the Russian bounties allegations at all.

This would be the same “Russian bounties” narrative which was discredited all the way back in September when the top US military official in Afghanistan said no satisfactory evidence had surfaced for the allegations, which was further discredited today with a new article by The Daily Beast titled “U.S. Intel Walks Back Claim Russians Put Bounties on American Troops“.

The Daily Beast, which has itself uncritically published many articles promoting the CIA “Bountygate” narrative, reports the following:

It was a blockbuster story about Russia’s return to the imperial “Great Game” in Afghanistan. The Kremlin had spread money around the longtime central Asian battlefield for militants to kill remaining U.S. forces. It sparked a massive outcry from Democrats and their #resistance amplifiers about the treasonous Russian puppet in the White House whose admiration for Vladimir Putin had endangered American troops.

 

But on Thursday, the Biden administration announced that U.S. intelligence only had “low to moderate” confidence in the story after all. Translated from the jargon of spyworld, that means the intelligence agencies have found the story is, at best, unproven—and possibly untrue.

So the mass media aggressively promoted a CIA narrative that none of them ever saw proof of, because there was no proof, because it was an entirely unfounded claim from the very beginning. They quite literally ran a CIA press release and disguised it as a news story.

This allowed the CIA to throw shade and inertia on Trump’s proposed troop withdrawals from Afghanistan and Germany, and to continue ramping up anti-Russia sentiments on the world stage, and may well have contributed to the fact that the agency will officially be among those who are exempt from Biden’s performative Afghanistan “withdrawal”.

In totalitarian dictatorships, the government spy agency tells the news media what stories to run, and the news media unquestioningly publish it. In free democracies, the government spy agency says “Hoo buddy, have I got a scoop for you!” and the news media unquestioningly publish it.

[…]

Via https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2021/04/16/the-cia-used-to-infiltrate-the-media-now-the-cia-is-the-media/

Daily Expose

A doctor in charge of the vaccine roll-out in his small-town community in British Colombia, has sent a letter to the Ministry of Health asking for urgent clarification on whether or not it is medically ethical to continue the vaccine roll-out. In light of the quantity and severity of life altering side effects seen across his community after just one shot of the Moderna mRNA vaccine.

Dr Charles D. Hoffe of the Lytton Medical Clinic in Lytton, British Colombia, sent the letter to Dr. Bonnie Henry, the British Colombia Provincial Health Officer which contained some startling revelations into the consequences of administering the experimental Moderna vaccine across his community.

‘Dear Dr. Henry,
The first dose of the Moderna vaccine has now been administered to some of my patients in the community of Lytton, BC. This began with the First Nations members of our community in mid January, 2021. 900 doses have now been administered.
I have been quite alarmed at the high rate of serious side-effects from this novel treatment.’

Dr Hoffe revealed that from the relatively small number of people to have received a dose of the Moderna vaccine so far he had encountered numerous allergic reactions, including two cases of anaphylaxis, and one case of vaccine induced sudden death in a patient with no underlying health conditions. The doctor confirmed that he had also come across three people who had been left with disabling neurological conditions which had persisted for over ten weeks since the vaccine was administered. All of these occurred in people aged between 38 and 82.

Dr Hoffe then demanded answers to several questions in which he revealed that he had not had to give any medical care whatsoever, to anyone with Covid-19, leading him to conclude that the experimental vaccines are clearly more dangeros than the alleged Covid-19 disease.

[…]

Via https://dailyexpose.co.uk/2021/04/15/doctor-sends-letter-demanding-to-know-if-it-is-medically-ethical-to-continue-covid-vaccine-rollout-due-to-severity-of-life-altering-side-effects/

By Children’s Health Defense Team

Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson says health officials can’t have it both ways — either the vaccines are “highly effective” and the fully vaccinated can stop wearing masks and self-isolating, or the vaccines don’t work.

In the segment below on last night’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” the Fox News commentator said there are two things the public wants to know about COVID vaccines “and neither has anything to do with how many professional athletes or Netflix stars have been vaccinated.”

People want to know: Are the vaccines safe? And, are they effective?

Carlson said the public was assured the vaccines are safe, that the risks were so small we could ignore them completely. In fact, we were told that the clinical trials revealed “no evidence at all” that the vaccines could cause any life-threatening injuries,” Carlson said.

But after Tuesday’s decision by federal health officials to shut down the Johnson & Johnson vaccine rollout — because six people experienced blood clots, including one who died — Carslon had a lot of questions.

And those questions aren’t being answered by federal health officials, who are sending a lot of mixed messages these days, Carlson explained.

[…]

Via https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/tucker-carlson-vaccines-work-or-they-dont/

Jonathan Turley

A new report from Capitol Police Inspector General Michael Bolton has sent congressional leaders scrambling after finding that Capitol police were told that they could not use critical riot materials and tactics in preparation for the Jan. 6^th protests.  The finding challenges the narrative put forward in the second impeachment of former President Donald Trump. It also raises questions of whether congressional leaders (who repeatedly condemned Trump for the death and injuries of officers) share responsibility for the loss of control of Congress to the rioters.

The report, “Review of the Events Surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, Takeover of the U.S. Capitol,” raises additional questions over the responsibility of figures in Congress for the lack of sufficient forces and materials to deal with the protest. Previously, it was disclosed that offers of National Guard support were not accepted prior to the protests. The D.C. government under Mayor Muriel Bowser used only a small number of guardsmen in traffic positions.

The report magnifies suspicions over why House leadership refused to hold hearings with key witnesses before the second Trump impeachment. It also raises whether, after the controversial clearing of Lafayette Park in the prior summer, leaders in Congress hamstrung their own security force.

Ultimately, over 140 law enforcement officers were injured during the riot, and Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick later died. Two other officers later died by suicide.

[…]

Via IG Report: Congress Restricted The Capitol Police’s Use of Material And Tactics Before Capitol Riot — JONATHAN TURLEY