Roger Pardo-Maurer, the former U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Western Hemisphere Affairs (2001-2006), joined Jorge Ramos on Univision Noticias on Monday to discuss the unfolding disastrous withdrawal of US forces in Afghanistan.
During their conversation, Pardo-Maurer told Ramos the Department of Defense had foreknowledge of the Kabul Airport suicide bomber but denied permission to fire a Predator Drone missile once they had a lock on him.
13 US servicemen and women were killed in the blast along with over 100 Afghans.
The US Department of Defense allowed the bomber to murder 13 Americans.
A Taliban fighter stands guard as the group's Higher Education Minister Abdul Baqi Haqqani speaks on the Taliban's higher education policies at the Loya Jirga Hall in Kabul on Aug. 29, 2021. Afghan women will be allowed to study at university but there will be a ban on mixed classes under Taliban rule, Haqqani said.
Taliban's promise of 'complete amnesty' a lie, he says
The Taliban is gaining control over Kabul through threats and coercion, according to an Afghan citizen who has managed to flee his homeland before the terrorist group tracked down his address and paid a visit in search for him.
Just days after fleeing Afghanistan with his son and his wife on Aug. 24, Fawad, a PhD scholar who worked for the government prior to the Taliban takeover, told The Epoch Times that he had learned that a large group of Taliban members visited his home, demanding to know his whereabouts.
Meanwhile, Fawad said he knew of three other Afghans—one in a high-ranking position in the Afghan media—who had been detained and tortured by the Taliban for three days. He says they were all released after being forced to sign documents promising the terrorist group that they will not leave the country or make their detentions and torture public.
The account comes as growing evidence emerges of Taliban killings, detentions, threats, and intimidation, contradicting the terrorist group’s promises last month and in the Doha peace agreement not to retaliate against its opponents.
Speaking on condition on anonymity from a quarantine center in India on Monday, Fawad, who has authored some 200 articles in international journals and newspapers critical of the Taliban, said the terrorist group on Aug. 28 had interrogated a contractor guarding in his apartment building and demanded to see copies of his rental contract.
The Taliban members eventually left after learning that he had already been evacuated, he said.
“They took some information from that dealer and left because they weren’t able to find me. They took some pictures of the [rental] contract,” Fawad said in a phone interview, noting that the incident was witnessed and photographed by contacts who live nearby.
Fawad said that from what he’s heard about the Taliban’s behavior in recent days from friends in Kabul, the Taliban’s public promises of “complete amnesty” for those who have fought against them or worked for the government are no more than a front.
Enamullah Samangani, a representative of the Taliban’s cultural commission, said on Afghan state television on Aug. 17 that the group “has announced a complete amnesty for all Afghanistan, especially those who were with the opposition or supported the occupiers for years and recently.”
Fawad told The Epoch Times he believes he is being targeted by the Taliban for his affiliation with the government and his academic writing.
“Because of that, they came,” he said. “How they found my place and how they knew my name, I do not know.”
“They [the Taliban] are lying! Especially about those people who have written against them … they know who they’re targeting and searching [for],” Fawad added, pushing back against previous statements from the group that their fighters have been barred from entering private homes. It is unclear how strictly such commands are being followed by the rank and file of the Taliban, which is made up of a number of different factions.
The Taliban’s promises have also been undermined recently by a leaked report from the nonprofit RHIPTO Norwegian Centre for Global Analyses, which provides intelligence to the United Nations.
The report said that the Taliban terrorist group was carrying out highly organized door-to-door manhunts for people on their wanted list, threatening to kill or harm their relatives if they do not surrender.
Targets include people who have worked for or collaborated with American or other NATO forces, and former government employees, particularly those in intelligence services and the special forces units, according to the report, which warns of mass executions of those on the Taliban’s blacklist.
A man walks past a barrier wall on Jan. 19, 2021, painted with an image of former Afghan Tolo TV presenter Yama Siawash, who was killed in a targeted attack allegedly by the Taliban in Kabul on Nov. 7, 2020, amid the country’s peace talks.
Illustrating the dangers highlighted in the report, the family member of a journalist for Deutsche Welle, a German broadcaster, was shot dead by Taliban fighters searching for the reporter last month.
Meanwhile, award-winning Afghan photographer Massoud Hossaini, who fled to the Netherlands on Aug. 15, told AFP that he had received numerous threats from the Taliban over his work. Hossaini warned that the Taliban is attempting to slowly “kill the media.”
Agreeing with Hossaini’s remarks, Fawad told The Epoch Times that he believes the Taliban terrorist group is “afraid” of a free press and academics who are able to “write the facts.” For this reason, they want to “control the media,” he added.
Television channel TOLO, for example, has changed its coverage dramatically since the Taliban seized control of Kabul on Aug. 15, he said, noting that music is no longer played, female anchors have been removed, and only religious programs and “controlled” news are being aired.
Elaborating on how the Taliban threatens and coerces individuals in their quest for control, Fawad explained that the terrorist group puts pressure on the family of targets who have fled, or are in hiding, in order to force their return and surrender to the Taliban.
“If he does not return and surrender, they will torture the family,” Fawad said.
But as the terrorist group now seeks to present an image to the outside world that it is less repressive, many remain doubtful it has changed its ways.
Lt. Col. Omar Hamada, M.D., a former U.S. Special Forces flight surgeon, told The Epoch Times he believes the “brutal” Taliban regime still wants to institute Sharia Law “under the threat of violence, and they’re not going to change that.”
“To think that they’re going to change color now, I mean, does a leopard lose its spots? Of course not … the Taliban isn’t all of a sudden going to be some peace-loving regime that’s going to let people live the way they want,” he said on Monday.
Hamada, now an emergency room doctor, also criticized the Biden adminstration after Secretary of State Antony Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan confirmed that the United States shared with the Taliban a list of names for American citizens, green card holders, and Afghan allied personnel in an attempt to grant them entry to Kabul’s international airport.
“Even a high school student knows better than to hand our enemies a list of our assets and allies,” Hamada added. “It’s a target list … I think it’s a gift to the Taliban. These are the people who have been helping us, and I think it’s very naive for us to think that they’re going to use that for anything other than targeting them.”
As The Gateway Pundit reported on Tuesday — The New York Times published a hit piece targeting popular Trump-supporter Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) saying the Florida Congressman was under investigation for dating a 17-year-old girl.
The Gateway Pundit later spoke with a source close to Matt Gaetz who told us this report is completely false. Gaetz is not the target of the investigation. We were also told none of the women he was seeing were underage.
It’s not a surprise the left is after Gaetz since he is such an effective communicator and a staunch Trump supporter.
Rep. Gaetz told Axios“the allegations were as searing as they are false.”
On Tuesday night Rep. Matt Gaetz joined Tucker Carlson to discuss the New York Times hit piece.
Matt Gaetz UNLOADED on a former Justice Department official who was threatening his family and accused one of his.
Rep. Matt Gaetz:What is happening is extortion of me and my family involving a former Department of Justice official. On March 16th, my father got a text message demanding a meeting wherein a person demanded $25 million in exchange for making horrible sex trafficking allegations of me go away. Our family was so troubled by that we went to the local FBI and the FBI and the Department of Justice were so concerned about this, that they asked my dad to wear a wire. Which he did with the former Department of Justice official. Tonight I am demanding that the Department of Justice and the FBI release the audio recordings that were made under their supervision and at their direction which will prove my innocence. These allegations aren’t true and they were meant to bleed my family. This former Department of Justice official tomorrow was supposed to be contacted by my father so that specific instructions could be given regarding the wiring of $4.5 million as a down payment on this bribe. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that tonight somehow The New York Times is leaking this information, smearing me, and ruining the investigation.
Tucker Carlson: …First of all, who is this Department of Justice former employee who is trying to extort the money from you.
The Gateway Pundit wrote Attorney David McGee on Tuesday regarding Rep. Gaetz’s accusations. We did not hear back from McGee.
LaterRep. Gaetz’s office sent The Gateway Pundit this statement.
“Over the past several weeks my family and I have been victims of an organized criminal extortion involving a former DOJ official seeking $25 million while threatening to smear my name. We have been cooperating with federal authorities in this matter and my father has even been wearing a wire at the FBI’s direction to catch these criminals. The planted leak to the New York Times tonight was intended to thwart that investigation. No part of the allegations against me are true, and the people pushing these lies are targets of the ongoing extortion investigation. I demand the DOJ immediately release the tapes, made at their direction, which implicate their former colleague in crimes against me based on false allegations.” -Rep. Matt Gaetz
Matt Gaetz was right.
On Tuesday federal prosecutors accused Stephen Alford of trying to defraud US Rep. Matt Gaetz’s father Don Gaetz out of $25 million.
Federal prosecutors on Tuesday accused a Florida man of trying to defraud U.S. Representative Matt Gaetz’s father Don Gaetz out of $25 million, in a scheme allegedly linked to a criminal investigation targeting the Republican congressman.
In a newly unsealed indictment, prosecutors accused Stephen Alford, 62, of contacting Gaetz’s father and demanding $25 million. The congressman is currently under criminal investigation over an allegation that he sex trafficked a minor and, prosecutors alleged that Alford falsely claimed he could help Gaetz obtain a pardon from former President Donald Trump.
The indictment does not refer directly to the embattled pro-Trump lawmaker or his father, a former healthcare executive who also served as president of Florida’s state senate. But the alleged plot was widely reported this year after Gaetz released documents he said showed an extortion plot against him.
A maskless Canadian was so pissed off at Dairy Queen’s face covering policy that he urinated all over the restaurant counter, a Facebook video shows.
According to CTV News, the incident occurred around 9 p.m. on Saturday at Dairy Queen in Vancouver Island’s Port Alberni.
The disgruntled customer was allegedly already asked to leave the establishment once before he returned. When he came back, workers asked him to cover his face, citing British Columbia (BC) policy.
“You do not have a brain…,” he said, before asking the workers to explain themselves. “It’s not a BC policy. BC policy says you have to observe exemptions.”
The piddling provocateur proceeded to unzip his pants and defile the DQ service counter near the cash register “as the staff shrieked in horror,” the New York Postreported on Tuesday.
“F—ing psychopaths,” he yelled before leaving the restaurant.
Please contact the RCMP at 250-723-2424 if you have any information on this case. File # 2021-9151.
“This is the first incident of this nature,” RCMP Sgt. Chris Manseau told CTV. “I think people should just wear their masks and be safe and be polite.”
The tinkling transgressor has yet to be identified, and police have not made any arrests.
In a new study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, researchers at Washington University in St. Louis claim that a broader acceptance of the LGBTQ agenda has no bearing on the religious liberty of Christians in America.
“Although Christians perceive increasing bias against their group, there is little evidence to support those perceptions,” the study’s principal investigators, Clara L. Wilkins and Lerone A. Martin, wrote. Wilkins is an associate professor of psychological and brain sciences, while Martin is the director of American culture studies at Washington University.
David Closson, director of the Center for Biblical Worldview at Family Research Council, pointed to several recent examples of religious animus against American Christians: Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke suggesting that religious institutions should lose their tax-exempt status if they oppose same-sex marriage; Pete Buttigieg, another Democratic presidential candidate, arguing that religious organizations that hold Biblical beliefs about gender and sexuality—and therefore choose to not hire LGTBQ people—should be barred from receiving federal funding; and perhaps the most pervasive attack on people of faith—the Equality Act, which would strip away key religious liberty provisions and conscience protections found in the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
“Clearly, there’s been a profound shift in culture against those of us who believe, as Scripture teaches, that God has a design for sexuality,” Closson said.
Albert Mohler, president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, also lamented the study’s obvious partiality toward LGBTQ advocates.
“There is no doubt that the Left is doing everything within its power to marginalize conservative Christians,” Mohler said. “This is not a new ambition, but it certainly has renewed energy, fueled by the LGBTQ revolution. Scriptural Christianity is increasingly at odds with a society of moral rebellion.”
He added: “The LGBTQ movement is demanding that Christians abandon Biblical Christianity, and then they suggest that we are the ones who are the agents of conflict if we won’t go along with their revolution.
