It’s Friday.
I’m having two concurrent music moods…
For Friday August 27th, 2021, President has received his daily. This morning D.C., time the President has met with Cabinet members to receive updates on the ongoing situation in Afghanistan. Since his Thursday schedule was upended following the deadly terror attack at the Kabul airport, this morning he will host the Prime Minister of Israel Naftail Bennett. Later this afternoon he will receive his weekly economic brief.
President Biden has tweeted 1 time and retweeted 2 times; I will be sharing his one Friday tweet down thread.
When Biden Bits was published for Thursday, President Biden had not tweeted. He added 3 tweets giving him a Thursday Tweeting Total of 3 tweets and 2 retweets.
The YouTube video is 28 minutes and 19 seconds long. President Biden’s remarks can be found here.
Friday’s tweet:
The video is 2 minutes and 45 seconds long. It splices two segments of his remarks from yesterday, together.
Explainer: Two of the text tweets from Thursday, and the video shared on Friday, are all connected to to same text from his remarks from Thursday. Bold text is tweeted text; brackets means the text was omitted from the tweets and the video. I’ve also split the text where they spliced the two sections of his speech. Confused? Yeah, me too, roll with it, it’s Friday…
President Biden (1:22): These American service members who gave their lives — it’s an overused word, but it’s totally appropriate — they were heroes. Heroes who have been engaged in a dangerous, selfless mission to save the lives of others. They were part of an airlift, an evacuation effort unlike any seen in history, with more than 100,000 American citizens, American partners, Afghans who helped us, and others taken to safety in the last 11 days. [Just in the last 12 hours or so, another 7,000 have gotten out.] They were part of the bravest, most capable, and the most selfless military on the face of the Earth. And they were part of, simply, what I call the “backbone of America.” They’re the spine of America, the best the country has to offer. Jill and I — our hearts ache, like I’m sure all of you do as well, for all those Afghan families who have lost loved ones, including small children, or been wounded in this vicious attack. And we’re outraged as well as heartbroken. [Being the father of an Army major who served for a year in Iraq and, before that, was in Kosovo as a U.S. attorney for the better part of six months in the middle of a war — when he came home after a year in Iraq, he was diagnosed, like many, many coming home, with an aggressive and lethal cancer of the brain — who we lost. We have some sense, like many of you do, what the families of these brave heroes are feeling today. You get this feeling like you’re being sucked into a black hole in the middle of your chest; there’s no way out. My heart aches for you. But I know this: We have a continuing obligation, a sacred obligation to all of you — the families of those heroes. That obligation is not temporary; it lasts forever.]
President Biden (4:30): To those who carried out this attack, as well as anyone who wishes America harm, know this: We will not forgive. We will not forget. We will hunt you down and make you pay. I will defend our interests and our people with every measure at my command. Over the past few weeks — I know you’re — many of you are probably tired of hearing me say it — we’ve been made aware by our intelligence community that the ISIS-K — an arch-enemy of the Taliban; people who were freed when both those prisons were opened — has been planning a complex set of attacks on the United States personnel and others. This is why, from the outset, I’ve repeatedly said this mission was extraordinarily dangerous and why I have been so determined to limit the duration of this mission. [And as General McKenzie said, this is why our mission was designed — this is the way it was designed to operate: operate under severe stress and attack. We’ve known that from the beginning.] And as I’ve been in constant contact with our senior military leaders — and I mean constant, around the clock — and our commanders on the ground and throughout the day, they made it clear that we can and we must complete this mission, and we will. [And that’s what I’ve ordered them to do.] We will not be deterred by terrorists. We will not let them stop our mission. We will continue the evacuation.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken offered this statement on Thursday, following the terror attack.
Today’s bombings around the Kabul airport were a devastating reminder of the dangerous conditions in which our servicemembers and diplomats are operating as we conclude the United States’ 20-year military mission in Afghanistan. As the President said, the servicemembers who were killed and wounded today are heroes. They put their lives on the line to defend our civilian personnel, the civilian personnel of our allies and partners, and Americans, third-country nationals, and Afghans seeking safety. To date, more than 100,000 people have been safely evacuated from Kabul – a testament to the bravery, skill, and determination of all those who are contributing to this vital mission. We grieve those we lost today. And we express our most heartfelt condolences to their loved ones.
We also grieve the loss of Afghans gathered near the airport hoping for a chance to start a new life elsewhere. And we honor the more than 2,300 U.S. servicemembers who have died in Afghanistan since 2001, the more than 20,000 who have been wounded, and the more than 800,000 who have served in America’s longest war, as well as other Americans killed or wounded in the conflict.
Around the world, U.S. Marines protect American embassies and diplomats. They put themselves in harm’s way so that we can do our jobs on behalf of the American people. Even after the attack, they are doing that right now in Kabul, as they are in so many other parts of the world. And they will continue to do so as we complete this mission.
We at the State Department feel an extraordinary debt of gratitude to them, today and every day.
State.gov. 08/26/2021.
The Pentagon held a news conference late on Thursday.
The video is 45 minutes and 10 seconds long, with Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby starting the presser at the 15 minute and 22 second mark. A full transcript of the presser can be found here.
General Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr. (USMC), Commander, U.S. Central Command offered the opening remarks:
It’s a hard day today. As you know, two suicide bombers, assessed to have been ISIS fighters, detonated in the vicinity of the Abbey Gate at Hamid Karzai International Airport and in the vicinity the Baron Hotel, which is immediately adjacent. The attack on the Abbey Gate was followed by a number of ISIS gunmen who opened fire on civilians and military forces. At this time, we know that 12 U.S. service members have been killed in the attack and 15 more service-members have been injured. A number of Afghan civilians were also killed and injured in the attack. We are treating some of them aboard HKIA. Many other Afghan civilians have been taken out to hospitals in town. We’re still working to calculate the total losses, we just don’t know it — what that is right now.
Their loss lays heavily on us all, and I’ll talk a little bit more about that as we go through my prepared remarks.We continue to focus on the protection of our forces and the evacuees as the evacuation continues. Let me be clear, while we’re saddened by the loss of life, both U.S. and Afghan, we’ll continue to execute the mission. Our mission is to evacuate U.S. citizens, third country nationals, Special Immigrant Visa-holders, U.S. embassy staff, and Afghans at risk.
Despite this attack, we are continuing the mission – the evacuation of (inaudible) – and, as of today, we have approximately 5,000 evacuees on the ramp at HKIA awaiting airlift. Since August the 14th we have evacuated more than 104,000 civilians from HKIA, over 66,000 by the United States and over 37,000 by our allies and partners. And that includes bringing out about 5,000 Americans.As the Secretary of State said yesterday, we believe that there are about a thousand, probably a little more than a thousand American citizens left Afghanistan at this point. We are doing everything we can in concert with our Department of State partners to reach out to them and to help them leave if they want to leave. And, remember, not everybody wants to leave. Yesterday we brought in over 500 American citizens. It would be difficult to overestimate the number of unusual challenges and competing demands that our forces on the ground have faced. The threat to our forces, particularly from ISIS-K, is very real, as we have seen today.
I would also like to express the sense of profound pride I have in the in the creative, determined, and professional way that our forces have overcome those challenges and to deliver the results that we talked about in my opening portion of remarks – the number of people that we have been able to extract from Afghanistan.
It would also be remiss of me not to mention the tremendous contributions of our many coalition partners, and they stood with us on the ground at HKIA. And also the inter-agency and international partners who supported the evacuation. The many Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines, and Coast Guardsmen who supported this operation downrange across the Central Command, the European Command, and the Northern Command areas of responsibility. Moreover, this evacuation could simply not have been done without the amazing flexibility of U.S. Transportation Command and the airlift provided by the United States Air Force. No other military in the world has anything like it. I’d also like to thank the host nations that have generously provided access to their facilities for the processing, the care, and the feeding of our evacuees.
I also need to acknowledge the temporary suffering that some of our evacuees have had to endure. Please know that we continue to execute our number one mission, which is to get as many American citizens and other evacuees as possible out of Afghanistan. We also continue to expand the capacity in our intermediate facilities to ensure safe, sanitary, and humane conditions for evacuees while continuing to look for alternate ways to expedite their processing and ultimate transfer to the United States or other destinations.I’d like to close out my remarks today by just taking a moment to describe the heroism that our Marines, Soldiers, and Sailors are exhibiting. As they screen the people who are coming on to the airfield. This is close up work. The breath of the person you are searching is upon you. While we have over-watch in place, we still have to touch the clothes of the person that’s coming in.
I think you all can appreciate the courage and the dedication that is necessary to do this job. And to do it time after time. Please remember that we have screened over 104,000 people.Finally, I’d like to offer my profound condolences to the families of our servicemen and women and Afghan civilians who lost their lives today. We have put more than 5,000 U.S. service members at risk to save as many civilians as we can.
It’s a noble mission. And today, we have seen firsthand how dangerous that mission is. ISIS will not deter us from accomplishing the mission, I can assure you of that. All Americans can and should be proud of the men and women of the armed forces who are facing these dangers head on with our international partners and all our other friends that are with us. And we appreciate your thoughts and prayers for all our service members who are carrying on this mission today.
Defense.gov. 08/26/2021.
Reuters reported this morning that 92 people were killed on Thursday. 13 of those people killed were U.S. service members.
More from the article:
Islamic State (ISIS), an enemy of the Islamist Taliban as well as the West, said one of its suicide bombers had targeted “translators and collaborators with the American army” on Thursday.
The number of Afghans killed has risen to 79, a hospital official told Reuters on Friday, adding more than 120 were wounded. A Taliban official said the dead included 28 Taliban members, although a Taliban spokesman later denied that any of their fighters guarding the airport perimeter had been killed.
It was not clear if suicide bombers detonated both blasts or if one was a planted bomb. It was also unclear if ISIS gunmen were involved in the attack or if the firing that followed the blasts was Taliban guards firing into the air to control crowds.
ISIS-K was initially confined to areas on the border with Pakistan but has established a second front in the north of the country. The Combating Terrorism Centre at West Point says ISIS-K includes Pakistanis from other militant groups and Uzbek extremists in addition to Afghans.
Reuters.com. 08/27/2021.
On Friday the Pentagon held another briefing.
President Biden’s two retweets from Friday:
The daily press briefing is schedule to begin around 1:00 p.m. D.C., time.
This is an Open Thread.
HAPPY FRIDAY…
