WaPo’s ‘Fact Check’ of Claim Taliban Seized $83 Billion of US Military Gear Gets Ridiculed Over Actual Figure

The Washington Publish has been uncovered for a ridiculous ‘reality verify’ of a declare displaying how dangerously incompetent the Biden administration has change into.

The headline seems to say all of it: “No, the Taliban didn’t seize $83 billion of U.S. weapons.” However what truly occurred? Did the Taliban seize something in any respect?

Figuring out how headlines are abused on social media, the WaPo’s ‘reality verify’ is clearly political cowl for an administration that’s already on the ropes. Whereas Kessler provides the declare ‘three pinocchios,’ he ought to truly award it to himself, primarily based on the substance of the actual fact verify.

It wasn’t $83 billion, you see, it was “solely” $65 billion value of high-tech navy {hardware}, which is able to undoubtedly be exploited by the Taliban and reverse-engineered by America’s enemies around the globe. Not so dangerous, in response to WaPo.

“We don’t usually pay a lot consideration to claims made by the previous president, as he largely simply riffs golden oldies. However this can be a new declare,” Kessler writes. “A model of this declare additionally circulates extensively on right-leaning social media — that in some way the Taliban has ended up with $83 billion in U.S. weaponry. (Trump, as traditional, rounds the quantity up.)”

“The $83 billion quantity will not be invented out of complete material,” Kessler admits. “However it displays all the cash spent to coach, equip and home the Afghan navy and police — so weapons are simply part of that. At this level, nobody actually is aware of the worth of the gear that was seized by the Taliban.”

Quick story lengthy, the estimate is nearer to $65 billion, which the actual fact checker doesn’t say outright in his “three pinocchios” article. The true determine was identified by a number of conservatives who had been ready to “pounce” on the story:

The movies of Taliban fighters confiscating out navy {hardware} and utilizing it has outraged U.S. taxpayers whose cash was spent to arm and equip an Islamic terrorist state.

The Pentagon claims that the navy gear left on the Kabul airport has been disabled or ‘demilitarized.’ Because the movies clearly present, there’s a substantial quantity of usable navy gear that did fall into enemy palms.