The Trump administration’s record numbers of airstrikes in Afghanistan have failed to expand the Afghan government’s control over its population and stop the Taliban from quickly replacing its opium and heroin processing labs pulverized by the U.S. military, a watchdog agency said in a report to Congress released Tuesday.
In its latest quarterly audit to lawmakers, the U.S. Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) noted:
The expanded authorities provided [by President Trump] to U.S. forces in Afghanistan have resulted in a significant uptick in U.S. air strikes and special operations against the insurgency, with the U.S. dropping 653 munitions in October 2017, a record high since 2012 and a more than three-fold increase from October 2016.
These actions have yet to increase the Afghan government’s control over its population … The goal of the Afghan government is to control 80% of its population within the next two years.
While the U.S. military is targeting the Taliban’s opium business, dealing a blow worth millions of dollars to the group, it is barely making a dent on the illicit trafficking of the lucrative poppy plant, noted SIGAR, explaining:
U.S. and Afghan air strikes this quarter have targeted the Taliban’s opium-production industry, which the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) estimates has as many as 400–500 active facilities at any given time.
According to [U.S.] General [John] Nicholson, [the top commander of American and NATO forces in Afghanistan], U.S. and Afghan forces recently began targeting them, destroying 10 on November 19 alone.
Gen. Nicholson vowed to continue the pressure on the Taliban’s economic engine — opium and heroin — while remaining careful to avoid collateral damage and civilian casualties, which have increased by more than ten percent to 4,474 between June 1 and the end of November 2017 when compared to the same period the previous year.
Why let the Taliban have the fields.
Afghan security forces, supported by U.S. Air Force B-52s, F/A-18s, and other aircraft, including the F-22 Raptor, are carrying out the operations against opium and heroin, which generate up to 60 percent of the Taliban’s funding.
“Brigadier General Bunch announced that 25 narcotics labs had been destroyed since the beginning of the campaign in November, which he said was the equivalent of nearly $80 million eliminated from the drug-trafficking organizations while denying over $16 million in direct revenue to the Taliban,” reports SIGAR.
The inspector general suggested the cost of carrying out the airstrikes on the heroin labs may outweigh the outcome, noting:
According to the latest DOD [U.S. Department of Defense] financial- management report, an F-22 costs between $35,294 and $36,799 per hour to operate; a B-52 between $32,569 and $34,341 per hour; and an F/A-18 between $9,798 and $16,173 per hour, depending on the model.
By contrast, the labs being destroyed are cheap and easy to replace. Afghans told Reuters it would takes three or four days to replace a lab in Afghanistan. According to UNODC [United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime], the morphine/heroin labs need only simple equipment such as a stove, iron barrel, and locally made pressing machines. According to DOD, the value of seizures and destroyed equipment is based on DEA baselines.
In the report, SIGAR revealed that for the first time, the Pentagon prohibited the watchdog agency from publicizing the full district and land-area under the control of the Afghan government and terrorist groups.
The Pentagon also banned SIGAR from reporting on the strength and capabilities of the struggling Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF), who, along with Afghan civilians, have borne the brunt of casualties primarily at the hands of the Taliban in recent years.
“Afghan government control or influence has declined and insurgent control or influence has increased overall since SIGAR began reporting control data in January 2016,” noted the auditor.
U.S. military combat deaths have also increased in recent months.
“From January 1 through November 26, 2017, 11 U.S. military personnel were killed in Afghanistan, and 99 were wounded. This is double the personnel killed in action compared to the same periods in 2015 and 2016,” noted SIGAR in a press release announcing its report to Congress.
Gen. Nicholson did say in November, “About 64 percent of the population is controlled by the government, about 24 percent live in contested areas, and the Taliban control the remaining 12 percent,” without mentioning anything about who controls the territory.
Based on the top commander’s assessment, Afghan terrorist groups, primarily the Taliban, control or contest 36 percent of the population.
Some independent analysts, namely experts from the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD), have questioned the U.S military’s assessment placing the territory under terrorist control or influence at about 45 percent in late September.
In a significant departure from previous administrations, President Trump authorized the U.S military to strike opium and its heroin derivative in Afghanistan, the world’s top producer of the poppy plant.
Despite investing $8.7 billion in American taxpayer funds on counternarcotics efforts since the Afghan war began in October 2001, Afghanistan is producing more opium and heroin than ever before, doubling production last year to 9,000 tons from 2016, revealed the United Nations.
The Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) branch in Afghanistan is reportedly growing, claiming responsibility for an attack in Kabul this week and “the deadliest attack” covered by the SIGAR quarterly report “when an IS-K [Khorasan province] militant detonated a suicide bomb during a gathering of 150–200 people at a Shi’a cultural center in Kabul. The Afghan Ministry of Public Health said at least 41 people were killed and 84 wounded.”
Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe is stepping down, according to NBC News.
He will remain on “leave” until spring, when he can officially retire from the FBI.
Update: According to Fox News, McCabe was “removed.” A source told the news outlet that this was the earliest date possible for the FBI to remove him and still leave him fully eligible for his pension. A CNN reporter has also shared this version of events.
McCabe’s departure has been expected for months. ABC News reported last year that McCabe planned to retire in March 2018, when he becomes fully eligible for pension benefits.
News of McCabe’s retirement comes the day the House intelligence committee is expected to vote on releasing a classified memo that details alleged FBI abuse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) in investigating the 2016 campaign of then-presidential candidate Donald Trump.
The memo is expected to say that FBI officials obtained a FISA warrant to spy on Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page. Democrats and the FBI have been fighting the release of the memo, saying it would be “reckless” to do so.
McCabe has come under scrutiny from congressional Republicans, who have questioned why he only recused himself from the Clinton email investigation a week before the election when his wife had received hundreds of thousands in campaign donations from a close Hillary Clinton ally.
McCabe was appointed FBI Deputy Director in 2016 by former President Obama, and became acting director in May 2016, after President Trump fired James Comey.
President Trump arrives in Devos like a boss with his America First Policy. The Devos Elite want to regulate Social Media to stop You and I. Trumps Farm Bill will help lead to a pathway for food stamp recipients to get back to work. Facebook Chief Marketing Officer Leaves Company to Advise Democratic Party for 2020 Elections. Illegal Aliens Charge Pro-Amnesty Thom Tillis’ Senate Office. Pope Francis compares ‘fake news’ to serpent in the Garden of Eden. Bob Mueller Covered Up Saudi Families Involvement In 9/11.
She should have a right to wear this because it is her body right? Liberals don’t like it.
Singer Joy Villa made another statement on this year’s Grammy red carpet, stepping out on Sunday in a gown painted with a rainbow fetus and the words “choose life” on her purse.
The white dress and its colorful uterus detailing was paired with her statement purse and crown. This is far from Villa’s first conservative statement at the Grammys, as last year she wore a blue “Make America Great Again” dress that featured Donald Trump’s embellished along the back. In 2015, she again created controversy when she wore a sheer dress of orange netting.
Villa, who is also a Fox News contributor, posted on Twitter that she hand painted the wedding dress picked from the Bridal Garden, a non-profit with all proceeds going to Brooklyn Charter, a Bedford-Stuyvesant charity. The singer has long been vocal about her support for Trump and the conservative movement, featuring a picture with herself and Ivanka Trump on her Twitter profile.
Liberals might try to kill her.
The Grammys return to New York this Sunday for the first time in 15 years and feature performances from nominees Kendrick Lamar, Bruno Mars, Kesha and Pink. The show will be broadcast live from Madison Square Garden at 4:30 p.m. PT/7:30 p.m. ET on CBS. “The Late Late Show” host James Corden returns to emcee the ceremony for a second year.
President Donald Trump responded to criticism from rapper Jay-Z (Shawn Carter) who called him a “superbug” during a discussion on CNN about racism.
“Somebody please inform Jay-Z that because of my policies, Black Unemployment has just been reported to be at the LOWEST RATE EVER RECORDED!” Trump wrote on Twitter.
Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
Somebody please inform Jay-Z that because of my policies, Black Unemployment has just been reported to be at the LOWEST RATE EVER RECORDED!
8:18 AM – Jan 28, 2018
43,379 43,379 Replies 42,691 42,691 Retweets 146,856 146,856 likes
Twitter Ads info and privacy
Trump made his remarks on Twitter after Jay-Z’s comments were highlighted on Fox News. The famous rapper joined CNN’s Van Jones who asked him to respond to Donald Trump’s “shithole countries” comment.
He responded:
CARTER: Yes, it’s disappointing and hurtful. It is hurtful, moreso. Everyone feels anger. After the anger, it’s really hurtful because he’s like looking down on a whole population of people.
You are so misinformed because these places have beautiful people and beautiful everything. It’s just this is the leader of the free world speaking like this. But on the other side, this has been going on.
This is how people talk. This is how they talk behind closed doors. It was a moment when Donald Sterling had been exposed as this racist on a private phone conversation that he was having.
It’s like, OK, that’s one way to do it. Another way would have been to have his team and let’s talk about it together and let’s — maybe some penalties because once you do that, all of the other closet racists just run back in the hole.
You haven’t fixed anything. You have sprayed perfume on the trash can. What you do, when you do that is the bugs come and you spray something and you create a superbug because you don’t take care of the problem.
You don’t take the trash out, you keep spraying whatever over it to make it acceptable. As those things grow, you create a superbug. And then now we have Donald Trump, the superbug.
During the interview, Jones noted that black unemployment was historically low under the Trump administration, but the rapper did not appear impressed.
JONES: To give him a little bit of credit too, he is somebody who is now saying, look, I’m growing – I’m dropping black unemployment. Black people are doing well under my administration.
Does he have a point that maybe the Democrats have been giving us good lip service, but no jobs. He may say terrible things, but putting money in our pockets. Does that make him a good leader?
CARTER: No because it’s not about money at the end of the day. Money is not — money doesn’t equate to happiness. It doesn’t. That’s missing the whole point. You treat people like human beings, then — that’s the main point.
You can’t treat someone like — it goes back to the whole thing, you going to treat me really bad and pay me well. It’s not going to lead to happiness. It’s going to lead to, again, the same thing.
Jay-Z psychoanalyzed Trump, suggesting that the president had something in his past that led him to act out.
“Somewhere along his lineage, something happened to him. Something happened to him and he is in pain and he is expressing it this sort of way,” he said.
Project Veritas has published its latest Twitter exposé, featuring both current and former Twitter employees allegedly explaining how the company receives, stores, and sells user data, as well as their attitudes on privacy.
In their undercover investigation, James O’Keefe and other Project Veritas reporters secretly recorded Twitter employees as they allegedly revealed the extent the platform surveils users.
“Everything you send is stored on my server. You can’t [delete it], it’s already on my server now,” declared Direct Messaging Engineer Panay Singh. “So all your sex messages and your, like, dick pics are on my server now. All your illegitimate wives, and, like, all the girls you’ve been fucking around with, they are on my server now.”
“I’m going to send it to your wife, she’s gonna use it in your divorce,” he joked. “So what happens is, like, when you write stuff or when you post pictures online, they never go away. Like, they’re always on there… Even after you send them, people are, like, analyzing them, to see what you’re interested in, to see what you’re talking about, and they sell that data… Everything. Anything you post online.”
Mihai Florea, a software engineer at the company, corroborated Singh’s claims.
“That’s how we make most of our money,” he explained. “You’re basically paying for the right to use our website with your data basically, and it’s the same on every free website.”
Former engineer Conrado Miranda also revealed to Project Veritas’ secret cameras that the company “already has a lot of information about you,” even before you join Twitter, adding “there is no way” to protect users if the information falls into the wrong hands.
Senior Network Security Engineer Clay Haynes also told O’Keefe that he had personal access to user DMs, expressing, “It is creepy Big Brother.”
“I mean it’s like a level… I don’t want to say it freaks me out, but it disturbs me,” he continued.
Project Veritas’ previous releases from their Twitter investigation revealed employees bragging about censorship against conservatives.
