Nigel Farage Afghan Lies BUSTED

As is his wont - and that of the right-leaning part of our free and fearless press - former Brexit Party Oberscheissenführer Nigel “Thirsty” Farage earlier this week used his bully pulpit at Gammon Broadcasting™ News (“Bacon’s News Channel”) to put the boot in on US President Joe Biden by talking well, but lying badly.

Nige pulled a series of seriously big whoppers. “One of the most extraordinary things is that Joe Biden has left Afghanistan, and left behind $85 billion worth of up-to-date modern, functioning American military equipment, and last night we saw the Taliban going into one of the hangers … they’re all dressed in American combat uniforms with night sights”.

Go on. “And they’ve just discovered, yes, amongst the haul are some lovely helicopters, and they frankly look like kids in a sweet shop. I find it difficult to believe that Biden could have left them with all this military equipment. When the British left Dunkirk, they made sure that every gun barrel was spiked, that no vehicle was operative. They smashed and destroyed everything. And yet what Biden has done is to effectively arm the Taliban”.

And that is one complete pack of lies. Let’s start with the evacuation from Dunkirk in May and June 1940. This from Historic UK: “Between 27th May and 4th June 1940, nearly 700 ships brought over 338,000 people back to Britain, including more than 100,000 soldiers of the French Army. All heavy equipment was abandoned and left in France, including over 2,000 pieces of artillery and 85,000 motor vehicles. Also left behind were more than 440 British tanks that had been sent to France with the [British Expeditionary Force]”.

So what of the “$85 billion” claim? Farage can’t even get his lies straight. As the WaPo has told via a fact check, the claim - which is only $83 billion in the original version - came from Combover Crybaby Donald Trump and his supporters. However, “The $83 billion figure - technically, $82.9 billion - comes from an estimate in the July 30 quarterly report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR)”. And it covers what?

“For ALL SPENDING on the Afghanistan Security Forces Fund sine the US invasion in 2001”. Of which equipment would have been a small fraction. As to any of it being usable, here’s CBS News: “In the withdrawal from Afghanistan, the U.S. ‘demilitarized,’ or rendered useless, nearly 170 pieces of equipment in Kabul, according to the head of U.S. Central Command”. And what kinds of equipment would those have been?

“General Kenneth ‘Frank’ McKenzie in a press briefing Monday announcing the completion of the withdrawal from Afghanistan said the U.S. on its way out of Hamid Karzai International Airport destroyed up to 70 MRAPs and 23 Humvees - military vehicles - and 73 aircraft … ‘Those aircraft will never fly again,’ McKenzie said. ‘They'll never be able to be operated by anyone. Most of them were non-mission capable, to begin with, but certainly they'll never be able to be flown again’”. What about those helicopters?

“A video posted on Twitter Monday showed members of the Taliban walking into the airport looking at the defunct equipment left behind … ‘I would tell you that they can inspect all they want. They can look at them, they can walk around, but they can't fly them,’ Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby told CNN in an interview Tuesday morning”.

Nigel Farage - lying yesterday, lying today, and lying tomorrow. No change there, then.

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