Afghanistan: A cornucopia of lies, deceit and partisan recrimination and misdirection

We all expected it. We are going to get it. The lies are gushing from all over the place. Our former ex-president, Lyin Donnie, hacked up a hairball yesterday that immediately got a three Pinocchio rating from professional fact checkers, but rave reviews from fascist radical right media. The Washington Post fact checker writes: 

“ALL EQUIPMENT should be demanded to be immediately returned to the United States, and that includes every penny of the $85 billion dollars in cost.” 

This is a new claim. A version of this claim also circulates widely on right-leaning social media — that somehow the Taliban has ended up with $83 billion in U.S. weaponry. (Trump, as usual, rounds the number up.)

.... the equipment provided to Afghan forces amounted to $24 billion over 20 years. The GAO said approximately 70 percent of the equipment went to the Afghan military and the rest went to the national police (part of the Interior Ministry).

Of course, some of this equipment may be obsolete or destroyed — or soon may not be usable.

Even more problematic, there were not enough maintenance crews to maintain the aircraft. “Without continued contractor support, none of the AAF’s airframes can be sustained as combat effective for more than a few months, depending on the stock of equipment parts in-country, the maintenance capability on each airframe, and the timing of contractor support withdrawal,” the [GAO] report said.

“No one has any accounting of exactly what survived the last weeks of the collapse and fell into Taliban hands, and even before the collapse, SIGAR had publicly reported no accounting was possible in many districts,” said Anthony H. Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “In rough terms, however, if the ANDSF could not sustain it without foreign contractors, the Taliban will have very serious problems in operating it. That covers most aircraft and many electronics and heavier weapons.”

The Pinocchio Test

U.S. military equipment was given to Afghan security forces over two decades. Tanks, vehicles, helicopters and other gear fell into the hands of the Taliban when the U.S.-trained force quickly collapsed. The value of these assets is unclear, but if the Taliban is unable to obtain spare parts, it may not be able to maintain them.

But the value of the equipment is not more than $80 billion. That’s the figure for all of the money spent on training and sustaining the Afghan military over 20 years. The equipment portion of that total is about $24 billion — certainly not small change — but the actual value of the equipment in the Taliban’s hands is probably much less than even that amount.

Significant factual error and/or obvious contradictions. This gets into the realm of "mostly false." But it could include statements which are technically correct (such as based on official government data) but are so taken out of context as to be very misleading. The line between Two and Three can be bit fuzzy and we do not award half-Pinocchios. So we strive to explain the factors that tipped us toward a Three. 

The WaPo fact checkers describe four Pinocchio statements like this: Whoppers.

Questions: 

1. Are the WaPo fact checkers biased in favor of Lyin Donnie because they should have rated his lying blither a four Pinocchio statement since the liar’s assertion of $85 billion was literally 100% false? In other words, the fact checkers let that literal lie slide.

2. Is this just the beginning of what is going to turn out to be a hell of a lot of lying, finger pointing, deceit, sleight of hand and so forth from all over the place, left, right, center, alt-universe, pragmatic rationalists, Christian nationalist, fascist, etc., or just from some of those places?