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10:55 PM ET, August 15, 2021

memeorandum

 Top Items: 
Susannah George / Washington Post:
Afghanistan's military collapse: Illicit deals and mass desertions  —  KABUL — The spectacular collapse of Afghanistan's military that allowed Taliban fighters to reach the gates of Kabul on Sunday despite twenty years of training and billions of dollars in American aid began with a series …
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John Podhoretz / Commentary Magazine:
All Biden Had to Do Was...Nothing  —  All Joe Biden had to do was nothing.  Had Joe Biden done nothing, Afghanistan would not have fallen to the Taliban today.  Had he just let the status quo continue, the status quo would have continued.  Afghanistan would have plodded along and we would have kept …
Discussion: RedState, Breitbart and Instapundit
George Packer / The Atlantic:
Biden's Betrayal of Afghans Will Live in Infamy  —  There's plenty of blame to go around for the 20-year debacle in Afghanistan—enough to fill a library of books.  Perhaps the effort to rebuild the country was doomed from the start.  But our abandonment of the Afghans who helped us …
David E. Sanger / New York Times:
For Biden, Images of Defeat He Wanted to Avoid  —  President Biden will go down in history, fairly or unfairly, as the president who presided over a humiliating final act in the American experiment in Afghanistan.  —  Rarely in modern presidential history have words come back to bite …
Julian Borger / The Guardian:
Taliban's Abdul Ghani Baradar is undisputed victor of a 20-year war  —  Return to power of movement's co-founder embodies Afghanistan's inability to escape history of conflict  —  Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Taliban leader freed from a Pakistani jail on the request of the US less than three years ago …
Discussion: The Daily Caller
Ben Smith / New York Times:
Afghans working for U.S. government broadcasters fear Taliban backlash.  —  More than a hundred journalists employed by the American government's own radio stations remain in Afghanistan as the Taliban take power, U.S. officials and Afghan journalists said Sunday.
Jonathan Swan / Axios:
Terrorist threat to U.S. levels up after Taliban rise, Joint Chiefs chair says  —  Afghanistan has fallen to the Taliban much faster than President Biden or his top military leaders predicted.
Discussion: Fox News, The Guardian, CNN and The US Sun
Axios:
1 big thing: Biden's stain  —  Rarely has an American president's predictions been so wrong, so fast, so convincingly as President Biden on Afghanistan.  — Usually military operations and diplomacy are long; the outcomes, foggy.  Not here.  —  Just five weeks ago, President Biden assured Americans …
Wall Street Journal:
‘Saigon on Steroids’: The Desperate Rush to Flee Afghanistan  —  Kabul airport descends into chaos as Afghan civilians besiege the terminal and Western countries scramble to evacuate personnel, in a dizzying coda to America's longest war  —  KABUL—The lucky few were already inside …
Discussion: CNN, Bloomberg, Insider and Japan Times
The Bulwark:
America Has a Moral Obligation to Get Our Translators Out of Afghanistan  —  (SCREENSHOT HTTPS://MOBILE.TWITTER.COM/BSARWARY/ STATUS/1427002551858311173)  —  We promised we would get them out.  We promised we would stand by the thousands of Afghan translators and their families as they stood …
U.S. Embassy / U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan:
Security Alert - U. S. Embassy Kabul, Afghanistan  —  Event: The security situation in Kabul is changing quickly including at the airport.  There are reports of the airport taking fire; therefore we are instructing U.S. citizens to shelter in place.  —  U.S. citizens wanting assistance …
Jeff Stein / SpyTalk:
Exclusive: U.S. Channel for Emergency Afghan Visas Crashes  —  State Department mailbox crashes under weight of thousands of SIV applications  —  The email in-box for emergency visa applications for Afghans who worked with the U.S. has crashed, according to a former Air Force serviceman trying …
Annie Linskey / Washington Post:
From Saigon to Kabul: Biden's response to Vietnam echoes in his views of Afghanistan withdrawal
Discussion: Fox News and Politico
Associated Press:
Biden team surprised by rapid Taliban gains in Afghanistan
Associated Press:
Taliban enter Kabul, await ‘peaceful transfer’ of power
Isaac Chotiner / New Yorker:
How America Failed in Afghanistan
Discussion: Bloomberg and 19FortyFive
Financial Times:
Low morale, no support and bad politics: why the Afghan army folded
Discussion: Atlantic Council
Wall Street Journal:
Intelligence Reports From Afghanistan Missed One Key Element: Speed
Discussion: HotAir
The Daily Beast:
Kabul Falls, Afghanistan Burns
Krista Torralva / Dallas Morning News:
Texas Supreme Court blocks mask mandates in Dallas, Bexar counties  —  The entirely Republican court granted a temporary stay at the request of Republican Gov. Greg Abbott and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Sunday.  —  Two days after a Dallas appeals court dealt Texas Gov. Greg Abbott …
RELATED:
Laura Reiley / Washington Post:
Biden administration approves largest increase to food assistance benefits in SNAP program history  —  Benefits will rise by 25 percent on average, an infusion of cash that advocates say better reflects the modern cost of a basic diet.  —  The Biden administration has approved the largest increase …
Discussion: Associated Press and Politico
RELATED:
Seth Moulton / U.S. Congressman Seth Moulton:
Moulton Statement on the Situation in Afghanistan  —  WASHINGTON — Representative Seth Moulton (D-MA) issued the following statement on Afghanistan:  —  To say that today is anything short of a disaster would be dishonest.  Worse, it was avoidable.  The time to debate whether we stay …
NBC News:
‘Easy money’: How international scam artists pulled off an epic theft of Covid benefits  —  Last June, the FBI got a warrant to hunt through the Google accounts of Abedemi Rufai, a Nigerian state government official.  —  What they found, they said in a sworn affidavit, was all the ingredients for a …
 
 
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 More Items: 
Kenneth C. Brill / The Hill:
Afghanistan: Can we build bipartisan agreement out of bipartisan failure?
Lindsay Kornick / Fox News:
Rep. Van Drew calls for Biden's resignation amid Taliban takeover in Afghanistan
David Schuman / WCCO | CBS Minnesota:
St. Thomas GOP Chair Gisela Castro Medina Arrested In Florida On Sex Trafficking Charges
Discussion: Law & Crime
 Earlier Items: 
Roger L. Simon / theepochtimes.com:
Elder Ignores Mainstream Media in First Online Press Conference
 

 
From Mediagazer:

Max Tani / @maxwelltani:
Memo: WaPo's Matt Murray lays out plans for WP Ventures, the “third newsroom”; Krissah Thompson will be editor and Samantha Henig will be general manager

Liz Pelly / Harper's:
How Spotify used its Perfect Fit Content program to rig its system against musicians, filling popular playlists with “ghost artists” to cut its royalty payouts

Jack Dunn / Variety:
Trump appoints Mark Burnett, the British TV executive who created and produced the reality show The Apprentice, as a special envoy to the UK

 
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