How much U.S. military equipment does the Taliban now control?
“We’ve made the Taliban into a major U.S. arms dealer for the next decade,” said Andrzejewski. “They now control 75,000 military vehicles. This is about 50,000 tactical vehicles, 20,000 Humvees they control about 1,000 mine-resistant vehicles, and even about 150 armored personnel carriers…”
“We found a Federal Audit that detailed up to $200 million worth of drones that had disappeared,” said Andrzejewski. “We don’t know where 600,000 weapons are within the country.”
The military-industrial corporations have all been paid-off. We picked up the tab for that plus shipping. Maybe we could get UPS to pickup every Congress-critter who voted to spend all this money and deliver them to Kabul. Leave them to wander around and try to find an honest job.
Taliban special force fighters arrive inside the Hamid Karzai International Airport after the U.S. military’s withdrawal. [Khwaja Tawfiq Sediqi/AP Photo] Click to enlarge
U.S. Coordination With Taliban Against ISIS-K ‘Possible,’ Pentagon Says https://www.forbes.com/sites/joewalsh/2021/09/01/us-coordination-with-taliban-against-isis-k-possible-pentagon-says/?sh=716423f924f9
The United States and the Taliban tacitly and unofficially worked together against IS-K before the U.S.-backed Afghan government collapsed, even though the two sides were adversaries, the Washington Post reported last year. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/10/22/taliban-isis-drones-afghanistan/
“Afghanistan is a mountainous landlocked country at the crossroads of Central and South (Southern) Asia. Some of the invaders in the history of Afghanistan include the Maurya Empire, the Ancient Macedonian Empire of Alexander the Great of Macedon, the Rashidun Caliphate, the Mongol Empire led by Genghis Khan, the Timurid Empire of Timur, the Mughal Empire, various Persian Empires, the Sikh Empire, the British Empire, the Soviet Union, and most recently a coalition force of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) troops, the majority from the United States, which entered the country in the first-ever invocation of NATO’s Article 5 “an attack on one is an attack on all” following the September 11 attacks in the United States. A reduced number of NATO troops remained in the country in support of the government under the U.S.–Afghanistan Strategic Partnership Agreement. Just prior to American withdrawal in 2021, the Taliban regained control of the capital Kabul and most of the country. They changed Afghanistan’s official name to the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasions_of_Afghanistan
Former President Donald Trump has released another statement on President Biden’s Afghanistan withdrawal, this time focusing on the U.S. military equipment that was left behind and likely wound up in the hands of the Taliban.
The Biden administration should demand the Taliban immediately return the equipment, Trump argued, but if they refuse he proposed either using “unequivocal military force” to retrieve it or at least bombing “the hell out of it.” https://theweek.com/afghanistan/1004326/trump-bomb-the-hell-out-of-us-equipment-left-behind-in-afghanistan
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E-EV7LuXoA8G30B?format=jpg
Trump Reveals His Master Plan for Afghanistan: “…We should have hit that country years ago, hit it them really hard, and then let it rot.” https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-reveals-his-master-plan-for-afghanistan
Bomb them Back to the Stone Age: An Etymology https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/30347
“It’s true that over a span of 20 years, the U.S. spent more than $80 billion to train and equip military forces in Afghanistan. However, this number does not reflect the value of the equipment that was left behind after America’s withdrawal from the area. Billions of dollars worth of equipment was removed or demilitarized by the U.S. military before leaving Afghanistan. An exact accounting of the military equipment currently in the Taliban’s hands is not available, though one expert estimated that the total value was closer to $10 billion.” (Snopes) https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/us-taliban-arsenal-military-equipment/ scroll down for sources
“Republicans Inflate Cost of Taliban-Seized U.S. Military Equipment” (Annenberg Public Policy Center FactCheck) https://www.factcheck.org/2021/09/republicans-inflate-cost-of-taliban-seized-u-s-military-equipment/