CAN IT BE POSSIBLE THAT KATRINA PIERSON IS THIS FUCKING STUPID?

Katrina Pierson history part deux.

Trump nutter Katrina Pierson presented yet another unique take on history, telling host Victor Blackwell that President Barack Obama invaded Afghanistan.

Fresh from defending Donald Trump supposed “sarcastic” remarks that Obama is the “founder” of ISIS, Pierson attempted to explain to Blackwell that Obama also took the U.S. into Afghanistan after pulling out of Iraq.

“If you want to go way back, we can look at the troop surge. And after 2007, al Qaeda was essentially in ashes,” she explained. “It was Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton who then destroyed the entire rollout by wanting to pull out early, announcing their plans, ignoring intelligence and that’s the reason why ISIS is a global issue and not a –”

Blackwell then interrupted her, “Barack Obama in 2004, is that what you said?”

“No,” she replied. “I said afterwards. After the surge when al Qaeda was in ashes. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton — remember we weren’t even in Afghanistan by this time. Barack Obama went into Afghanistan creating another problem. It was Hillary Clinton and her incidents in Libya. They armed the rebels and funded them.”

VIDEO COURTESY OF CNN

The reality is, even though it doesn't fit the narrative of these nutters - the U.S. invaded Afghanistan in 2001 in an effort to overthrown the Taliban. George W. Bush was president at the time.

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Blogger-In-Chief

Roger West

WHATS IN A NUMBER?

AFGHANISTAN, A LOOK AT THE NUMBERS

Afghanistan, the astounding numbers it racked up:

The longest war in American history came to a close on Sunday, marked by a ceremony in Kabul 13 years after it started in 2001 following the terrorist attacks on September 11 of that year.

“Resolute Support will serve as the bedrock of an enduring partnership” between NATO and Afghanistan, said General John Campbell, commander of the International Security Assistance Force at the ceremony. He furled the ISAF flag and unfurled the “Resolute Support” flag, denoting the beginning of the new international mission, which will focus more on supporting Afghan troops that have faced a growing insurgency in recent weeks.

The decision to officially end the war, announced back in May, does not mean that there will be no U.S. or foreign troops on Afghan soil by any stretch of the imagination. In 2015 and 2016 the already-reduced levels of troops will drop by half, consolidating around Kabul and Bagram Air Force Base, and finally down to normal Embassy staff.

Here are some numbers to provide a sense of scope to the war’s impact, longevity, toll, and effect:

13: number of years the war lasted, making this the longest war in American history

140,000: highest number of U.S. troops present in the country, in 2010, during the surge begun at President Obama’s behest

13,500: number of international troops that will stay in country for Resolute Support, including roughly 10,800 U.S. troops (a number that will continue to fall through 2015 and 2016), and 1,000 more than planned earlier this year

38,000: number of U.S. forces that were in Afghanistan at the beginning of 2014

2,224: the number of U.S. troops, according to an AP tally, who were killed in Afghanistan during the war, with more than 1,000 international coalition troops killed

17,674: estimated number of U.S. troops wounded during Operation Enduring Freedom, according to the website iCasualties.org

21,000: estimate number of Afghan civilians killed since 2001 as a result of “crossfire, improvised explosive devices, assassination, bombing, and night raids into houses of suspected insurgents,” according to the website Costs of War

90: percentage of troops that are now home from Iraq and Afghanistan from the 180,000 that were in both countries when President Obama took office, according to a White House statement noting that 15,000 troops remain

747,000: estimated number of weapons the U.S. provided to the Afghan National Security Forces, many of which experts say have gone missing, prompting worries they will be used in escalating insurgency attacks by Taliban fighters

3,380: estimated number of people who died in the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, including those on the hijacked planes, first responders, and victims in the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon

35: number of years since the Marxist revolution, which essentially kicked off a near-constant period of brutal civil conflict

69: the number of women in Afghanistan’s parliament, which is proportionately more than the number in the U.S. Congress. To be fair, when written, their constitution set a quota of at least 27 percent female representation in parliament, a quota that was recently revised to 20 percent.

3 million: approximate number of girls who are now enrolled in school, while under the Taliban, virtually no girls attended school — and USAID helped to train 25,000 female teachers

1: the ranking Afghanistan received when Thomson Reuters released its list of most dangerous countries for women in 2011

9: the percentage of women who die in childbirth in Afghanistan

4,000: approximate number of midwives, up from less than 500 under Taliban rule — and half of the new ones were trained by USAID-supported programs

87: percentage of women who are illiterate

70-80: percentage of girls forced into marriage

14: cases of polio in 2013, which is a drop from 80 cases in 2011

7 million: approximate number of Afghan voters took part in last June’s presidential elections

46: number of people (20 civilians, 26 Afghan troops) who were killed due to attacks on Election Day

68: number of private television channels, not including 23 state and provincial networks — though journalists face many threats from security forces and religious entities

9.4: percentage of Afghanis who have internet access, according to a 2013 Ministry of Information report

3.3 million: new Afghani customers linked to 172 megawatts of new electricity on the nation’s grid — a six to twenty-eight percent jump in the number of Afghans with access to reliable power

34 million: amount, in dollars the U.S. spent trying, unsuccessfully, to provide Afghan farmers with soybeans as a new cash crop option

63.7 billion: dollars appropriated to “overseas contingency operations” in Iraq and Afghanistan for the coming year in the latest appropriations bill passed by Congress, including $2.9 billion for Afghanistan’s Ministry of Defense

62: percent drop in child mortality since 2002; infant mortality decreased 53 percent

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Blogger-In-Chief

Roger West

Ending The Afghan War Would Save Taxpayers 40,000 Times More Money Than Defunding NPR

Today, two deficit-cutting bills will be voted on in the House of Representatives. One bill, introduced by Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-CO) and fellow Republicans, would end all federal funding to National Public Radio (NPR). The other bill, sponsored by Reps. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) and Walter Jones (R-NC) and being pushed largely by progressive Democrats, calls for setting a strict timetable for withdrawal from Afghanistan that would mandate the end of combat operations in that country by the end of 2011.


Conservatives claim that defunding NPR would save taxpayers a great deal of money; former NPR employee Juan Williams even argued that NPR funding was taking away from “school breakfast programs [and] college scholarships.” Yet NPR receives only around 2 percent of its annual $161 million budget from federal grants, totaling approximately $3.2 million. Meanwhile, the FY2011 cost of the Afghan war has hit $113 billion.

Assuming that the costs of both the NPR funding and Afghan war would be the same for next year, that means that ending the Afghan war would save approximately 40,000 times more taxpayer dollars than defunding NPR’s grants from agencies such as the National Endowment for the Arts and Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Additionally, as the National Priorities Project shows, ending the war could help free up money for countless domestic priorities, like hiring millions of teachers or funding health care for tens of millions of poor children. Here are just some of the alternatives that could be funded for the cost of one year of the Afghan war:  

Health Care For 55 Million Low Income Children


1.6 million Elementary School Teachers for One Year

1.9 million Firefighters for One Year

14.1 million Head Start Slots for Children for One Year

13.8 million Military Veterans Receiving VA Medical Care for One Year

1.6 million Police or Sheriff’s Patrol Officers for One Year

19.3 million Students receiving Pell Grants of $5550

13.6 million Scholarships for University Students for One Year

Americans recognize these truths about the relative costs of the Afghan war versus NPR. That’s why polling shows that only a quarter of Americans want to see cuts to funding for public broadcasting, while the vast majority of Americans no longer support the Afghan war and want a clear exit from that country. If Republicans really want to “listen to the American people,” as they pledged to do last fall during their campaign, they would support ending the war in Afghanistan and really saving taxpayers money, not endorsing gimmicks to please the more extreme members of their base.  
UDATE:

During the floor debate on the Afghanistan issue, Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) blasted his colleagues for attacking NPR but supporting the war. "The fiscal conservatives are going to be overwhelmingly in support of slashing NPR and go home and brag about how they're such great fiscal conservatives...At the same time, they won't consider for a minute cutting a real significant amount of money!" Watch it here:



The House just voted 228-192 to cut off funding to NPR and 93-321 against the resolution calling for an end to the war in Afghanistan this year. Numerous Republicans defected to vote against defunding NPR and to vote for ending the war in Afghanistan. No Democrats voted to defund NPR but more voted against ending the war in Afghanistan than voted for ending it.

Truly a travesty of epic proportions!




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