Background info:

Patrick S. Tomlinson
@stealthygeek
Learned more about the story of this photo and now I'm mad.

This was taken today at Arlington National Cemetery. The grave belongs to Sgt Nicole Leeann Gee, USMC. She was among the 13 US service members killed in a suicide bombing during the Afghan withdrawal 3 yrs ago. 1/

Donald Trump is directly responsible for her death.

When negotiating the Afghanistan withdrawal, he deliberately cut out the Afghan government in Kabul we had been supporting for 20 years.

Instead, he negotiated exclusively with the Taliban. The enemy. 2/

Without any input from Kabul or our other partners in the theater, he released 5,000 Taliban, al Qaida, and affiliated fighters, criminals, and terrorists from prison because the Taliban told him to, swelling their combat force in the months before the withdrawal. 3/

When the Pentagon told Trump they would need a bare minimum security force of 4,000 troops to ensure a safe, orderly withdrawal from the country, Trump overrode his military advisors and slashed the number of remaining deployed troops to just 2,500. Sgt Gee among them. 4/

Trump did all of this in the waning months of his time in office, much of it after losing the election, to sabotage the situation and leave a --------- for Joe Biden to inherent. Three years ago today, that trap went off, costing 13 service members their lives. 5/

Mr. Thumbs Up Smiley Face has no shame:

Donald Trump Holds Responsibility for Afghanistan Withdraw, Ex-Adviser Says

McMaster, who was Trump's top national security adviser from February 2017 to April 2018, told CNN's Anderson Cooper during an interview on Monday night that his former boss was partly responsible for the debacle because he had decided to negotiate with the Taliban on terms of a withdrawal.

"Oh, yes," McMaster said after being asked by Cooper if Trump bears "part of the responsibility for what happened." McMaster then added, "The whole premise of talking to the Taliban before you leave Afghanistan...why the heck were we even doing that?"

"The Obama administration didn't negotiate with al-Qaeda and Iraq on the way out," he continued. "If we were gonna leave, why not just leave? What happened in these series of negotiations is we kind of threw the Afghans under the bus on the way out... then forced them to release 5,000 of some of the most heinous people on the earth."

In response to a request for clarification from Cooper, McMaster confirmed that he was referring to the Trump administration forcing the then-U.S.-backed Afghan government to release 5,000 Taliban fighters as part of the withdrawal negotiations.

And the lying by the Trump campaign continues:

Dan Lamothe
@DanLamothe
Fact check: JD Vance says here there hasn't been a "single" investigation into the Abbey Gate bombing. That is very wrong.

In fact, there have been a few, including one in which DOD released more 2,000+ pages of docs. They formed a backbone for a series of stories I did in 2022.

Here's the second thread for those who don't use X:

#NeverForget that time Trump accidentally told the truth about the US withdrawal from Afghanistan: "I started the process, all the troops are coming back home. They couldn't stop the process!"

"with overlaid captions claiming Trump didn't lose a single soldier in 18 month"

Trump misleads on Afghanistan casualties

CLAIM: When former President Donald Trump was in charge, 18 months went by in Afghanistan when "we didn't lose one American soldier."

AP'S ASSESSMENT: False. There is no year-and-half time frame under Trump's presidency alone that no combat deaths among U.S. service members were reported. That occurred during the 18 months preceding the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, which included months under the Biden administration as well.

During Trump's presidency, which ran from January 20, 2017, to January 20, 2021, there were 45 combat deaths among U.S. service members reported in Afghanistan, as well as 18 "non-hostile" deaths, according to the Defense Casualty Analysis System.

Won't this count as lying for political gain? Yes, I believe it would:

There was an 18-month stretch that saw no combat, or "hostile," deaths in Afghanistan: from early February 2020 to August 2021.

There were two combat deaths reported in early February 2020, when Trump was president, and none reported again until late August 2021, when an attack killed 13 U.S. troops amid the exit from Afghanistan, during Biden's presidency. There were also several "non-hostile" deaths among U.S. service members in Afghanistan during that time frame, specifically in 2020.

Looking at other periods of Trump's presidency also tells a different story than the one he offered.

During the last, full 18 months before Trump left office in January 2021--from July 2019 to December 2020 --there were 12 combat deaths reported.