Its a bit bizarre to see the frequent references here (and some right wing media) based on a “news-release” yesterday by Trump that somehow the Taliban has ended up with $80+ billion in U.S. weaponry as a result of the rushed withdrawal. Apparently the Trumpkopf was using a recent report from the Inspector General for Iran Reconstruction programs that estimated that the TOTAL
funds spent since the 2001 invasion to train, equip, house, feed etc the Afghan military and police was about $82.9 billion although no one really knows the value of the equipment that was seized by the Taliban. Most of those funds were expended prior to 2015. Numbers from a separate 2017 GAO report suggest that weapons and hardware probably accounted for $25 billion over the 20 year period. While thats a still a big number, Trump’s 340 percent exaggeration is about the norm for his “alternative facts” mentality. For the Taliban though, thats still a lot of hardware.
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