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   From: js@phendrie.con   
      
   The former president and his secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, are attacking   
   President Biden over Afghanistan even as their own policy faces harsh   
   criticism.   
      
   By Michael Crowley   
   Aug. 19, 2021   
      
   WASHINGTON — Days before the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks two   
   years ago, President Donald J. Trump had a novel idea. He would invite leaders   
   of the Taliban, the group that harbored Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan as the   
   founder of Al Qaeda plotted his strikes on America, to join peace negotiations   
   at the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland.   
      
   The notion of any presidential meeting with the Taliban, let alone one close to   
   Sept. 11, stunned many of Mr. Trump’s top advisers. But Mr. Trump was eager   
   to   
   engage with the militant group, which the United States had been fighting for   
   almost 20 years, as he pursued his goal of removing American troops from   
   Afghanistan by the end of his term.   
      
   Months earlier, at Mr. Trump’s direction, the State Department had begun   
   face-to-face talks with the Taliban in Qatar to negotiate an American exit. Mr.   
   Trump called off the Taliban visit to Camp David after an American soldier was   
   killed in a bombing in Kabul, the Afghan capital, but the peace talks   
   continued.   
      
   They culminated in a February 2020 deal under which the United States agreed to   
   withdraw in return for Taliban promises not to harbor terrorists and to engage   
   in their first direct negotiations with the Afghan government. Mr. Trump’s   
   secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, attended the signing ceremony in Doha and   
   posed   
   for a photo alongside the Taliban leader, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, which   
   resurfaced this week on social media. Mr. Baradar is widely expected to become   
   the head of a new Taliban government based in Kabul.   
      
   https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/19/us/politics/trump-biden-afghan-taliban.html   
      
   Trump always cozied up with terrorists and dictators.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)