Chuck Schumer & Pelosi Dance while Taliban Terrorizes
Dear Editor:
It’s bad enough that Schumer rarely if ever, opens his mouth to support Israel, or condemn the Squad’s anti Israel support of BDS, demanding all military aid to Israel stop or Pelosi’s promotion of Omar, a notorious Israel basher, to a prestigious Foreign Relations committee. Now both he and Pelosi sink to even lower levels, “Schumer, Pelosi panned for dancing with Stephen Colbert, Napa fundraiser with Biden’s presidency under siege.” Taliban leader Waheedullah Hashimi, “There will be no democratic system at all because it does not have any base in our country. We will not discuss what type of political system we should apply in Afghanistan because it is clear. It is sharia law and that is it,” he said.
“Khatera, a former police personnel, was brutalised by the Taliban last year in October when she was two months pregnant. On her way back home from work, she was accosted by three Taliban fighters who checked her ID first, then shot her multiple times. She took eight bullets in her upper body and indiscriminate knife injuries all over. The Taliban pierced her eyes with knives after she fell unconscious and left her to die…They (Taliban) first torture us (women) and then discard our bodies to show as specimen of punishment. Sometimes our bodies are fed to dogs. I was lucky that I survived it. One has to live in Afghanistan under the Taliban to even imagine what hell has befallen on the women, children and minorities there.”
So while Chuck and Pelosi dance, Americans, Afghanistans, girls and women, hide in terror, plead for their lives to be rescued, while the Taliban take control of the airport, while they go house to house killing any suspected of supporting Americans…Chuck and Pelosi dance the dance of immoral betrayal, of woke’s moral abyss, leaving all of us weeping and enraged, with America tarnished beyond recognition.
Sincerely
Ginette Weiner
House Should Not Authorize Trillions of Borrowing
Dear Editor:
The House is expected to vote this week on a Senate-passed budget resolution for Fiscal Year 2022 that would allow up to $1.75 trillion of borrowing through reconciliation instructions designed to enact $3.5 trillion in new initiatives (these initiatives could ultimately cost $5 trillion to $5.5 trillion). The House may also consider the Senate-passed bipartisan infrastructure bill, which would borrow $400 billion. Taken together, passage of these efforts could set the stage for $4.3 trillion of new debt before extending any of its expiring policies, enough to lift debt to a massive 119 percent of the economy by the end of the decade.
The following is a statement from Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget:
“The Senate budget resolution should be a non-starter in the House. It allows for $1.75 trillion of direct new borrowing at a time when debt is already headed to record levels. That kind of borrowing made sense during the recession and pandemic, but it would be irresponsible and harmful going forward.
The Speaker has said the House will ‘craft a bill that is paid for,’ and the budget resolution should reflect that – either with reconciliation instructions that add to $0 or with an overarching limit such as the Conrad Rule that prevents reconciliation from adding to the debt. House Leadership has long supported pay-as-you-go budgeting, and now is not the time to abandon it.
Before the House begins consideration of trillions of new spending and tax breaks, they should work to ensure the bipartisan infrastructure bill is fully paid for. While negotiators in the Senate worked hard to identify offsets, the Congressional Budget Office finds that they will fall $400 billion short. Rather than setting the stage for $1.75 trillion of new borrowing, the House should identify additional revenue and spending reductions so that infrastructure legislation is fully paid for and thus supports stronger economic growth.
Now is not the time to further explode our national debt.”
Sincerely
Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget
Taliban Style Censorship
Dear Editor:
NY CBS Channel 2 unannounced last minute cancellation of August 16th Monday nights “United States of Al” repeat episode will not soothe America’s guilt. The Biden Administration’s incompetent planning for the evacuation of of our own citizens along with thousands of Afghans who served as interpreters or worked for Americans will do nothing to save their lives. The Taliban will extract their revenge in coming days, weeks and months for those citizens who worked with us during the 20 year war in Afghanistan.
It is too bad that no one in the Biden administration paid attention to the public service announcement at the end of one episode. Two of the actors, Adhir Kalyan who plays Al, the Afghan interpreter and Parker Young who plays Riley, the Marine, promoted a private organization dedicated to bringing Afghan citizens, who put their lives on the line for us, helping them come to America.
CBS should be ashamed of themselves for promoting Taliban style censorship to America. They have the moral courage of the Cowardly Lion from the land of Oz, known as Hollywood. Watch how they will find a way to weasel out of their previous legal contract to produce a second season of United States of Al.
Sincerely,
Larry Penner
The CIA & the Mujaheddin
Dear Editor:
The CIA covertly funded the mujaheddin in Afghanistan in order to provoke an invasion by the Soviets. Once the Soviets did invade, we continued funding them throughout the next ten years (1979-1989). Total cost to the taxpayers was around $2.4 billion. Our so-called representatives never asked for our consent or even informed us about this expenditure. When the Soviets finally pulled out, the mujaheddin—which by then had morphed into the Taliban—took over the country.
We invaded in 2001. Our 20-year war in Afghanistan cost us an estimated $2.3 trillion, nearly 1,000 times more than what we provided the mujaheddin. Just as we did in Vietnam and so many other countries, we set up a corrupt puppet government. What I didn’t know at the time I posted, or perhaps had forgotten, was that in addition to financing Afghan officials and military who professed to be our allies, we continued funding the Taliban—our supposed enemy. I was reminded of this by Prof. David Vine in his recent article in The Guardian. He linked to other reports showing where the money went. I quote from them below.
Once the U.S. invaded, we paid the Taliban to refrain from attacking our supply trucks. We hired contractors to deliver food and equipment to troops based in the countryside, sometimes only a few miles from Kabul, and the contractors a portion of their pay as protection money. According to a 2009 report in The Nation, “US military officials in Kabul estimate that a minimum of 10 percent of the Pentagon’s logistics contracts–hundreds of millions of dollars–consists of payments to insurgents.”
While rural Afghans were living on as little as $2 per day, the C.I.A. delivered wads of cash to the office of Afghanistan’s president, Hamid Karzai. The New York Times reported in 2013 that our agents dropped off tens of millions of dollars there, in suitcases, backpacks, and even plastic bags. I’m sure Karzai’s successor, Ashraf Ghani, was treated equally well, although he claims to have fled the country carrying nothing but the clothes on his back. (I guess he already deposited his share of the loot in a Swiss bank.) We also paid off warlords and other government officials, including known opium dealers.
Sincerely
Martha Shelley
