US military intelligence so severely underestimated the capabilities of Afghanistan’s Taliban that it’s hard to believe it was a mistake at all, former CIA analyst Ray McGovern told RT, likening the snafu to the Vietnam War.
“What did they expect would happen” when CENTCOM chief General Kenneth McKenzie announced the US was withdrawing all air support for the Afghan army in mid-June, McGovern asked rhetorically in an interview with RT on Friday. Even if civilian intelligence had screamed to the sky that the Taliban was “just going to roll through,” crushing the Afghan army in its wake, the Pentagon would have turned a deaf ear, he added.
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