The NNSA labs and many other labs got funds for research on counter terror including actions in Afghanistan. In fact the US spent 2 trillion dollars on Afghanistan. You could say we got Bin Ladin or at least forced him into Pakistan and then we got him which was 10 years ago, but other than that the whole thing as a huge waste of money and lives. The US is now just another empire to come to Afghanistan and fail. Plenty of blame to go around on this one. All those nukes and high tech gadgets just do not cut it sometimes. I like the saying I heard about what the Taliban have said of the US high tech version of war, "you have all the watches but we have all the time".
Maybe we should reconsider how we do national security in terms of intelligence gathering, tactics, weapons, analysis, and reliance on high tech and massive fire power. All those super smart military and intelligence agencies sure called this one wrong.
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We came, we saw, we lost.
Yesterday Secretary Blinken said this is nothing like Vietnam. Today a US plane takes off and runs over people and several people fall off the plane after it takes off. Indeed I do not remember that from our exit in Vietnam.
Not one of the prouder days in US history.
But they can’t make the President listen.
This was 100% avoidable,
8/16/2021 3:51 PM
Agreed. I remember clearly Saigon in 1975. This was, and will be, much worse. The VC and NVA didn't go around beheading people and enslaving females over 12.
So Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden got it all wrong and all those super secret agencies called it right?
I think a better version is that all those super secret agencies had the same fate that the happened to the NNSA labs. They greatly declined over the last 25 years, hired lots of bad people, and had no accountability.
Let us be honest, LLNL, LANL and so on are nowhere near the level of the labs they where where 20 years ago. Do you think the NSA, FBI, CIA and military intelligence are they same level they where in 1998, or did they suffer the same decay that befall the labs?
And predicted.
We spent 2 trillion in Afghanistan yet we cannot consider reparations? This country is messed up.
It is easy quarterback from your couch when it comes to the intelligence agencies but you people really don't know how hard and the amount of skill it needs to be part of these elite institutes. I think people in the NNSA labs think they are the smart ones. Most of you could never cut it any of our intellegence agencies. The pace is super fast, you get results or get thrown out, you got to think fast and make judgment calls, you have math, history, political science, game theory, and tactics the game is always changing. These jobs make STEM look tame. This is the for-front of national security. You get to hear complaints when things go wrong but you have no idea about how many things go right. Not to mention that they can get everything exactly right but higher ups still will chose a different path.
Indeed.
Since we just abandon or allies should Taiwan develop or buy some nukes?
8/17/2021 12:28 PM
I never enslaved anyone and I am not a racist. Why should my tax money pay for people who did/are? To be paid to people who were not enslaved and who enjoy all the freedoms I do? And most of whose ancestors came to the US after slavery?
Take it easy, it was just a joke. At least I think it was a joke. 2.3 trillion is a lot of money, you would think it could have been better used. You guys go on about how much NIF costs, but come on man, that is nothing compared to how much we just threw away. Not to mention is still has a chance to work out.