Last night, the CBS Evening News had a reporter, Imtiaz Tyab, in Kabul. The story includes a short clip of a segment from 2021 where he'd been reporting on an 'elite' Taliban unit, which was smartly outfitted in all practically brand-new, American-provided gear.
'American-provided,' as in 'left when we dropped everything and ignominiously bugged out.'
PRESIDENT TRUMP HAS BITTERLY CRITICIZED PRESIDENT BIDEN FOR ABANDONING WHAT HE SAYS IS BILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN MILITARY HARDWARE
That sentence really struck me as I watched the rest of the report, especially since I did an in-depth report on this very subject at the beginning of last December.
The lies - the lies we were force-fed by the Biden administration toadies are being exposed in real time, even as friendly reporters try to somehow turn it on Trump.
Tyab asks the Taliban spokesman if they're going to give the equipment back, since President Trump says the United States paid for it all.
This sets up a nice little shot where a hostile Islamic state gets to, once again, publicly tell the United States to suck a stone, with no consequences. The slap goes directly at Trump, vice the scurrilous auto-pensters like Jake Sullivan and John Kirby who engineered this appalling disaster in the name of a veritable geriatric mushroom brain to begin with.
Remember Adm. John 'No-Chaos, No Conscience' Kirby, the smoothest liar the defense department ever produced?
Biden Spokesman John Kirby on the Afghanistan withdrawal: "For all this talk of 'chaos,' I just didn't see it" pic.twitter.com/4LIF8ovMuC
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) April 6, 2023
Well, he did his best to poo-poo the $7 billion figure and shuffle off the abandoned equipment blame, because it wasn't OUR equipment.
*smirk*
It was the Afghans'.
John Kirby lied blatantly about the military equipment left behind
— Clyp Keeper (@DGrayTexas45) September 8, 2026
pic.twitter.com/E7JdJRhgTO
By last December, those 'Republicans are lying' figures were already starting to fall apart.
From it's all a GOP exaggeration...
...One week after the disaster, the Biden protection spin machine was already in motion with some interesting nuggets about the state of the equipment as well.
THAT FIGURE IS RUBBISH
Republicans Inflate Cost of Taliban-Seized U.S. Military Equipment
The Taliban seized an arsenal of U.S.-made military equipment when it overran the Afghan army, but not nearly as much as numerous Republicans have claimed.
...to the Inspector General's report...
...Strangely enough, despite what FactCheck, Jake Sullivan, Kirby, and others like the late Mr Cordesman assured us, the Afghan Reconstruction Inspector General seems to think the Taliban have made out pretty well on those abandoned and 'worn out' US military assets. In fact, almost exactly as well as those cranky Republicans were worried and warning about.
Isn't that peculiar? Like, it's almost the exact opposite of what the Biden stooges were telling us.
Afghan watchdog concludes billions in weapons U.S. left behind form ‘core’ of Taliban military
The inspector general responsible for scrutinizing U.S. reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan has detailed the billions of dollars wasted by the U.S. government during the 20-year war in the country and concluded that the arsenal of U.S.-provided military weaponry that was left behind now forms the “core” of the Taliban’s own military machine.
...it was all CYA for the Biden White House anti-American incompetents.
And as I watched that Taliban military parade on the CBS report last night, with a fully functional helicopter whop-whopping overhead, I remember those assurances from the finest devious minds the Democrats in charge of this catastrophe had to offer.
The late, arrogant Anthony Cordesman had said there was really no danger, because it was pretty low-tech for the most part, and besides, 'we'd junked most of it.'
Not to mention, what do scruffy goatherders know about fixing Blackhawk helicopters and boom booms?
*sniff*
...“U.S. military equipment tends to require extensive support from technical specialists,” Loren Thompson, a defense industry consultant and military analyst at the Lexington Institute, told us via email. “In the absence of such specialists, much of it will run down due to wear and a lack of spare parts.”
You know - it's amazing what you can pick up when you have to.
...And damned if those little hairy goatherders haven't learned to fix an airplane. We were assured by Experts™ that they couldn't do that either.
...The Taliban claimed to have recovered 40 operational aircraft from the former Afghan government, including two Mi-17 helicopters, two UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters, two MD-530 light helicopters, two Mi-24 helicopter gunships, and one fixed-wing transport aircraft – all of which the Pentagon said have since been observed flying.
SIGAR later revealed that an unclassified Defense Intelligence Agency assessment from March 2022 stated that the Taliban claimed to have repaired seven former Afghan Air Force aircraft, with the DIA indicating that “the Taliban may have obtained a degree of operation and maintenance capability.”
THE TALIBAN MAY HAVE OBTAINED A DEGREE OF OPERATION AND MAINTENANCE CAPABILITY
There's an understatement for you when something is in the air years later that wasn't ever supposed to be capable of flight to begin with.
The shocking conclusion is that every word coming out of the Biden administration was a lie.
And here is a lovely Taliban on Parade on my evening news, five years and one war with Pakistan later, and still abandoned American military vehicles are rolling while flying American aircraft swoop gracefully overhead.
Every word was a lie.
But Trump is the bad guy for calling it out and having some kind of nerve to be sore about it.
Thirteen of America's finest sacrificed.
— speedy jerry (@speedyjerry) September 9, 2026
Not a colonel or general was sanctioned or relieved. Everyone kept a pension.
Not a single Biden aide was arrested. Not even so much as publicly disgraced.
Biden was already off in his own sunset.
Five years on, the Neolithic Taliban can have parades with equipment that wasn't supposed to roll or fly or shoot.
And somehow Trump still gets to answer for it.
