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UK - England, Wales, N.Ireland, Scotland

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Re: UK - England, Wales, N.Ireland, Scotland

#26

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What is the ‘pingdemic’? Meaning of the term – and why the NHS Covid app has forced so many to self-isolate
High numbers of people being ‘pinged’ has led to concerns over staff shortages

By Alina Polianskaya
July 22, 2021 7:47 am(Updated 7:48 am)

‘Freedom day‘ arrived in England this week, bringing with it an end to most restrictions on social contact.

But as the rules are eased, some fear that a “pingdemic” could lead to “chaos”, due to large numbers of people being told to self-isolate through the NHS app leading to staff shortages and business closures.

Here’s what the term means and what the rules around self-isolation are.

What is the ‘pingdemic’?

The phrase is a play on words made up of the terms “pandemic” and “ping”. It refers to being notified by the NHS Covid-19 app on your phone.

When you are “pinged” by the app, you are advised to self-isolate for a set amount of time. The notification is sent after the app registers that you have been close contact with someone who has tested positive with Covid-19.

The number of people being “pinged” by the app has risen sharply over recent weeks, causing difficulties for some industries as large numbers of staff are having to stay at home and self-isolate.

Most commonly, those who are pinged will have to isolate for 10 days, though this can be longer if the person goes on to develop symptoms themselves.

Why has the ‘pingdemic’ caused so much trouble?

The number of Covid-19 cases reported in the UK has been rising sharply in recent weeks. As a result, so has the number of people being “pinged”.

Government figures confirmed more than 48,000 Covid-19 cases on Sunday 18 July.

More than half a million people were “pinged” by the app in the week up to 7 July.

This has resulted in staff shortages and disruption in industries where people cannot easily work from home, including in supermarkets and on transport networks.

Many businesses are worried that the situation could become even worse now that social distancing rules have been scrapped, with even more people being advised to self-isolate.

Richard Walker, managing director of Iceland, said: “We are in the unprecedented position of having to close stores due to staff absences – not because of Covid-19, but because of a broken and disruptive Track and Trace app.

“Staff absences rose by 50 per cent last week and the trend is sharp and quick, not just affecting our own colleagues but those throughout our supply chains and logistics networks.”

He called for an “overhaul of the rules around the Test and Trace app, ideally switching to a ‘Test and Release’ model”.




https://inews.co.uk/news/uk/pingdemic-w ... ed-1109939
Note: being ordered into isolation means free paid leave .
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Re: UK - England, Wales, N.Ireland, Scotland

#27

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Related - Test and Trace

The UK government under Boris Johnson has developed an app that tells you what to do if you suspect you may have covid, and especially the app will register the results of a new self quick test.

(1) You think you want to have ten days paid leave? Start the app and describe your symptoms. Confirm to the question that you expierience a cough. The app will command you into isolation for ten days. Nobody will ever check the validity of your reply.

(2) You need a covid quick test for participating in some activity. Purchase by mail order the test kit. Scan the QR code on the test kit. Then enter manually the result of the quick covid test. Again no one will verify what gets entered. So even if you were to test positiv, deny it when entering the result andd the app will give you a clear bill to pursue your activity and it will display this to the venue when requested. Of course if you enter a positive result you will be ordered to quarantine. But even that entry can be cancelled.

Source: this vlogger
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#28

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Boris Johnson's government dismatling the once praised UK helath care system
Ministers force NHS England to cover part of 3% staff pay rise
NHS leaders dismayed over having to divert care money as Treasury exempted from meeting full offer

Denis Campbell Health policy editor
Thu 22 Jul 2021 21.11 BST

Ministers are forcing the NHS to cover part of the cost of its 3% staff pay rise in a move which health service chiefs say could lead to cuts in patient care.

The NHS in England will have to find about £500m to help fund the 3% increase that the health secretary, Sajid Javid, announced on Wednesday, despite already struggling to meet the extra costs of the pandemic, including the care backlog, and treatment for the soaring numbers of people with “long Covid”.

Ministers are also facing mounting anger from the medical profession after it emerged that tens of thousands of doctors have been excluded from the 3% deal, despite the government’s advisers on NHS pay specifically recommending that they also be rewarded for helping to tackle Covid-19.

Traditionally, the Treasury meets the full cost of annual pay rises for NHS personnel. However, Boris Johnson has decided that the service will have to help shoulder at least part of the bill for the 3% uplift, payable to more than a million staff for 2021-22 and backdated to April.

NHS leaders reacted with dismay to having to divert money from providing care to help cover a cost normally borne by the Treasury, which usually gives the service the full sum needed to pay salaries in its annual budget settlement.


https://www.theguardian.com/society/202 ... ury-sunak-
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#29

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:doh:
GUFF ALERT Covid could be spread through FARTING, ministers claim
Niamh Cavanagh
8:59, 24 Jul 2021 Updated: 13:52, 24 Jul 2021

CORONAVIRUS could be spread through FARTING, government ministers have claimed.

Some officials have privately pointed to evidence that the virus can be spread through omitting bodily gasses in confined spaces like bathrooms.

One minister told The Telegraph that they read "credible-looking stuff on it" from other countries around the world.

They claimed there had been evidence of a "genomical-linked tracing connection between two individuals from a [toilet] cubicle in Australia".

Also, there have been some "well-documented cases of diseases spreading through waste pipes during lockdowns in Hong Kong when the U-bend had dried out".

However, government scientists have not confirmed the claim.

A spokesman for the Prime Minister said he was not aware the virus can be spread by farting.

"We keep the latest scientific evidence under review," the spokesman added.


https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/15678868/ ... ers-claim/
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Post by Azastan »

CORONAVIRUS could be spread through FARTING, government ministers have claimed.
Avoid Rudy Giuliani.
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#31

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The Sun needs a proof reader who knows the difference between omitting & emitting.
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#32

Post by Reality Check »

Estiveo wrote: Sun Jul 25, 2021 11:26 am The Sun needs a proof reader who knows the difference between omitting & emitting.
:rotflmao: Nice catch!
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#33

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Tesco offers lorry drivers £1,000 signing-on fee due to shortage
The effects of Brexit, Covid and tax changes have led to competition for workers between UK supermarkets

Sarah Butler
Tue 27 Jul 2021 19.03 BST

Tesco is offering a £1,000 signing-on fee for lorry drivers who join the company before the end of September, as it scrambles to overcome a desperate shortage of workers that has led to gaps on supermarket shelves.

The bonus has been publicised via a job advert posted on Tesco’s site, with the supermarket telling potential candidates: “You’ll play a vital role for our customers and communities, representing Tesco on the highways and byways of the UK.”

The offer to HGV drivers comes amid frenzied competition for those with a specialist licence caused by a mix of Brexit, the Covid-19 pandemic and tax changes that have prompted some drivers to leave the trade.

A surge in demand for home delivery has also offered a whole range of alternative employment for drivers, potentially without the unsocial hours of long-distance journeys.



https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... o-shortage
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#34

Post by Estiveo »

It's like a Monty Python sketch.
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#35

Post by Kendra »

Estiveo wrote: Thu Jul 29, 2021 10:37 am It's like a Monty Python sketch.
https:// mobile.twitter.com/atrupar/status/1420750723340328962
You beat me to it, but LOL. At least he didn't drag toilet paper up the airplane ramp :whistle:
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#36

Post by Maybenaut »

Kendra wrote: Thu Jul 29, 2021 10:38 am
You beat me to it, but LOL. At least he didn't drag toilet paper up the airplane ramp :whistle:
A metaphor for his entire administration.
"Hey! We left this England place because it was bogus, and if we don't get some cool rules ourselves, pronto, we'll just be bogus too!" -- Thomas Jefferson
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#37

Post by Reality Check »

Estiveo wrote: Thu Jul 29, 2021 10:37 am It's like a Monty Python sketch.
:snippity:
Cue up the Benny Hill theme (Yakety Sax). :lol:
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#38

Post by RTH10260 »

Codeword "incel"
Mother of Plymouth gunman first to die in rampage that killed six
Three-year-old girl also among victims of suspect who posted ‘incel’ video online

Fiona Hamilton, Crime and Security Editor | David Brown, Chief News Correspondent | Steven Swinford | Cameron Charters
Friday August 13 2021, 5.00pm BST, The Times

The gunman who killed five people in a mass shooting in Plymouth began his rampage by killing his mother days after relatives had appealed to mental health services for help.

Jake Davison, a self-confessed “incel” who blamed being fat for remaining a virgin, went on to kill three-year-old Sophie Martyn outside the family home along with her father Lee Martyn, 43. He then killed a dog walker and a woman outside a hairdresser’s. He also shot and seriously injured a man and his mother who lived near by.

The police watchdog has begun a review into why Davison, 22, was granted and allowed to retain a firearms licence. An investigation has also begun into whether he legally owned what witnesses described as a pump-action shotgun.



paywall https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/loca ... -pptxjrn2n
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#39

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:shock:
‘Bleeding for Jesus’: book tells story of QC who pitilessly abused young men
A moral crusader was accused of targeting public schoolboys at Christian camps and administering ‘horrific’ beatings

Harriet Sherwood
Sat 21 Aug 2021 06.00 BST

After five years of sadistic beatings in a garden shed by one of the UK’s most prominent barristers, and with a “special beating” to mark his 21st birthday imminent, Andy Morse tried to take his own life.

The student had endured thousands of lashes on his naked buttocks administered in the name of Jesus by John Smyth QC. He could no longer endure the pain, terror and humiliation.

Fortunately, his housemates broke down the bathroom door and called an ambulance. But Morse was not Smyth’s only victim. There are more than 100 known survivors, and perhaps many others: public schoolboys who took part in a network of military-style Christian holiday camps in the 1970s and 80s.

A new book, Bleeding for Jesus, tells the story of Smyth, the moral crusader who fought legal battles for “Christian values” in Britain’s courts while allegedly mercilessly abusing young men at his Hampshire home, and the Iwerne Trust, which organised the “Bash camps” that were his hunting ground and which turned a blind eye to his activities.

“Smyth was, in effect, the Church of England’s Jimmy Savile,” said the book’s author, Andrew Graystone, who has worked with survivors of clerical abuse for several years. “We learned from Savile that abusers can only abuse in a culture that enables it.”

The Iwerne project, which Graystone describes as a cult, recruited “young men who were the brightest and best from the most elite schools in the country to win them for the Christian faith, to create a church of purity within the wider Church of England”, he said.

It produced many of the most prominent conservative evangelical leaders within the C of E over the past 40 years. Many see themselves as “the guardians of the true gospel against the forces of liberalism”.


https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/ ... -young-men
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#40

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Brexit and Covid Add to U.K. Inflationary Pressure
By Irina Anghel
August 19, 2021, 1:01 AM GMT+2 Corrected August 19, 2021, 10:29 AM GMT+2

Britain’s exit from the European Union and the pandemic are adding to inflationary pressures that are starting to slow the U.K. economic recovery, two business surveys show.

The outlook was the weakest since January, in a poll of 1,500 companies by Lloyds Bank Plc and IHS Markit. A separate report Thursday by the South West Manufacturing Advisory Service showed almost all the 260 respondents reporting supply chain bottlenecks from a lack of staff and materials.

The findings indicate headwinds for the U.K. economy that are starting to push up prices, alarming Bank of England policy makers who earlier this month said they may have to tighten monetary policy. While industry is struggling to deliver all the goods ordered by the spurt of buying as lockdown eases, Brexit has dried up the supply of workers.

“We are seeing the first signs of supply chain struggles starting to hinder the upturn,” said Nick Golding, managing director of South West Manufacturing Advisory Service, a group working for government and local authorities to spur business in the region.

Lloyds said higher wages and materials costs led to an unprecedented rise in input costs. That confirmed a government report on Wednesday that showed a 9.9% surge in raw materials costs in July and the biggest jump in a decade for the price of goods leaving factory gates.

Of the 14 industry sectors Lloyds and Markit track, 12 grew in July, the lowest number in four months. Food and drink makers said output declined at the sharpest pace in eight months, and health businesses recorded the first drop in six months.



https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... ing-on-u-k
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#41

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Dominic Raab ‘persuaded PM he could stay on holiday’ in Afghanistan crisis
Report raises further questions over foreign secretary as Tory ex-minister says UK should have stood up to US over withdrawal

Peter Walker Political correspondent
Sun 22 Aug 2021 13.42 BST

A former defence minister has said the UK failed to “stand up” to the US over the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, amid more questions about Dominic Raab’s holiday-induced absence last weekend.

Raab, the foreign secretary, has faced repeated demands to resign for remaining until Monday on a family holiday in Crete while the Afghan government collapsed, and delegating tasks to junior ministers.

The Sunday Times reported that Raab had been told on the Friday that he should return to the UK, but that he persuaded Boris Johnson he could stay in Crete for two more days. According to the report, officials felt that Raab “nobbled” the prime minister into agreeing.

The same report said another Foreign Office minister, Lord Ahmad, whose role covers south Asia, was also away until last Sunday on a holiday in the UK.



https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... tan-crisis


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#42

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when the British government goes offline during summer
People posing ‘direct threat’ to UK found among potential Kabul evacuees
Six people on Britain’s ‘no fly’ list picked up in security checks in Kabul and Frankfurt

Dan Sabbagh
Mon 23 Aug 2021 22.30 BST

Six people deemed a “direct threat” to the UK have been flagged up in security checks of would-be evacuees from Kabul, amid broader warnings that the Islamic State terror group is targeting British soldiers and officials at the airport.

The individuals were on Britain’s “no fly” list – although MPs were told in a briefing on Monday that one had made it to Birmingham airport, where many evacuees are landing. It is unclear what happened to the person next.

On Monday night, however, the Home Office said that the person who had reached the UK was “not a person of interest” to the security services or police upon “further investigation”. The individual, who had not been identified, had been allowed to enter the UK.

Kevin Foster, a junior immigration minister, said: “We’ve had more hits on our ‘no fly’ list, that is people who are a direct threat to this country if they were able to come here, in the last week in the context of Afghanistan … than we would normally expect in a year of normal flights and travel [from the country]”.

Border Force officials said that another four people had been picked up as part of the screening process at Kabul airport being run by a mixture of Foreign Office and Home Office staff, while a fifth got as far as Frankfurt.



https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/ ... l-evacuees
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#43

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when waking up late from a good summer vacation sleep
UK scrambles to complete Kabul airlift as envoy flags risk of provoking Taliban
Warnings from senior diplomat that staying past deadline next week would cross ‘red line’

Military personnel guide evacuees aboard a US air force plane at Hamid Karzai international airport, Kabul. Photograph: US air force/Reuters
Dan Sabbagh and Julian Borger
Mon 23 Aug 2021 22.32 BST

Britain has begun a last-ditch scramble to get people out of Kabul amid warnings from the senior diplomat on the ground that staying past the 31 August deadline may not be realistic and risks provoking the Taliban.

Speaking to MPs from Kabul, Sir Laurie Bristow, the British ambassador to Afghanistan, said trying to hold Kabul’s airport any longer would be fraught with risk.

His remarks appear to put him at odds with Boris Johnson, who is due to lobby the US president, Joe Biden, at Tuesday’s G7 summit about the possibility of extending the evacuation beyond the end of the month.

But in a frank admission about the dire situation in the Afghan capital, Bristow made clear the Taliban would not tolerate western forces staying into September – a spokesman for the group said on Monday this would cross a “red line” and “provoke a reaction”.

He said: “The signalling that we’re seeing from the Taliban, including earlier today, is pretty uncompromising that they want the operation finished by the end of the month.


https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/ ... ut-taliban
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#44

Post by Dave from down under »

The Taliban is pretty emphatic that they are going to hold to the US deal and expect the West to as well.

To think of overstaying without Taliban approval would be… fraught

https://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2021-08- ... /100401208

The Taliban have rejected the possibility foreign troops could stay in Afghanistan to continue evacuations past the August 31 deadline.

Key points:

The Taliban have warned there would be "consequences" if foreign troops stayed beyond the deadline
Britain and France are pressing for an extension
The US has left open the possibility but says the decision is up to President Joe Biden

Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen told the UK's Sky News there would be "consequences" if foreign troops stayed beyond the deadline, saying it would become an "extended occupation".

"If the US or UK were to seek additional time to continue evacuations — the answer is no. Or there would be consequences," he said.
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#45

Post by Dave from down under »

To secure Kabul airport so that transport aircraft could leave in the face of Taliban opposition would require at least the commitment of 1 Airborne division - and the extraction of them would be casualty intense.

Oh… and another US agreement not worth the paper it was written on…

There is the civilian extraction option - probable price being international recognition of the legitimacy of Taliban rule and unfreezing of Afghan assets.

“He later told the BBC that any Afghans with the proper documents were free to leave on commercial flights. “

Those proper documents would be from the Taliban government and might cost…
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#46

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I believe that as part of the agreement with the Taliban all foreign troops were to leave Afghanistan by 1st May 2021. Does anyone know when the Taliban agreed to extend this to the end of August? (It is reported that Joe Biden has previously stated that the US withdrawal would be complete by 9/11).
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#47

Post by Dave from down under »

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#48

Post by RTH10260 »

from WaPo link above wrote:Trump’s deal with the Taliban, explained

By Amber Phillips
August 20, 2021 at 11:07 a.m. EDT

As criticism of the chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal continues to build, President Biden has argued that he effectively had little choice in the matter. A deal President Donald Trump cut with the Taliban last year forced Biden to choose between a withdrawal now and an escalation of the war, Biden says. And as The Fix’s Aaron Blake notes, with the brutal Taliban regime retaking power, former Trump officials are suddenly and conspicuously scrambling to distance themselves from that deal.

But when the deal was cut in Doha, Qatar, in February 2020, it wasn’t treated as huge news, because the war itself wasn’t big news. So, many people don’t actually know what’s in it.

With the deal now getting new scrutiny — along with the rest of how the war was prosecuted — we thought it worthwhile to provide some background.

Why Trump cut the deal

When Trump came into office, he was pretty transparent — he just wanted out of Afghanistan. “Trump had no real sense of what was at stake in the war or why to stay,” writes Georgetown professor Paul Miller in a digestible history of the 20-year war.

So Trump took a swing at something his predecessors hadn’t: a full-bore effort to strike a deal with the Taliban. It took nine rounds of talks over 18 months. At one point, Trump secretly invited the Taliban to the presidential retreat at Camp David on the eve of the 9/11 anniversary. But he shut that down — and on Twitter threatened to shut down all talks — after an American service member was killed and there was bipartisan backlash over the invitation.

Talks continued in Doha, and in February 2020, Trump announced that there was a deal. The basic contours: The United States was to get out of Afghanistan in 14 months and, in exchange, the Taliban agreed not to let Afghanistan become a haven for terrorists. The Taliban also agreed to start peace talks with the Afghan government and consider a cease-fire with the government. (The Taliban had been killing Afghan forces throughout this, attempting to use the violence as leverage in negotiations, U.S. intelligence officials believed.)

The deal laid out an explicit timetable for the United States and NATO to pull out their forces: In the first 100 days or so, they would reduce troops from 14,000 to 8,600 and leave five military bases. Over the next nine months, they would vacate all the rest. “The United States, its allies, and the Coalition will complete withdrawal of all remaining forces from Afghanistan within the remaining nine and a half (9.5) months,” the deal reads. “The United States, its allies, and the Coalition will withdraw all their forces from remaining bases.”
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#49

Post by Dave from down under »

Axion

Aug 20, 2021 - Politics & Policy
Trump officials back away from 2020 Taliban peace deal after withdrawal chaos
Jacob Knutson
:snippity:

Biden said he had to follow through with the agreement or risk new conflicts with the Taliban in the spring, which might have required an additional troop surge into Afghanistan. However, Biden's decision to push back the withdrawal date to Aug. 31 shows that he had the ability to refashion some parameters of the agreement.
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#50

Post by RTH10260 »

WaPo like above wrote:Cracks in the deal emerge almost immediately

A few months after the agreement was signed, there was plenty of evidence that the Taliban wasn’t as sincere as it appeared about peace. The United Nations said it had evidence that the Taliban and al-Qaeda still had ties. U.S. intelligence warned that al-Qaeda was “integrated” into the Taliban. The Taliban launched dozens of attacks in Afghanistan, ramping up its violence.

“The Taliban views the negotiations as a necessary step to ensure the removal of U.S. and other foreign troops under the U.S.-Taliban agreement, but the Taliban likely does not perceive that it has any obligation to make substantive concessions or compromises,” a U.S. inspector general report read.

It was all enough that when Biden came into office, U.S. officials questioned whether the Taliban was breaking its side of the deal.

But Trump chose to continue taking U.S. troops home
And he had bipartisan support for it.

It’s important to remember that by the time Trump came into office, the public debate on whether to stay in Afghanistan was largely over. Most Americans were done with the war. Even the military realized it couldn’t effect much more change on the current course. “The only way forward was going to be a political agreement,” Mark T. Esper, Trump’s former defense secretary, said recently. “Not a military solution.”

To a number of those who were paying attention, the whole deal felt like a naked attempt to just get out of Afghanistan. It was a campaign promise of Trump’s to be the president who finally ended America’s longest war. It would be something no other president had been able to accomplish.

Before the peace talks really got going, Trump had already started withdrawing thousands of troops, and he fired his defense secretary, Esper, after he wrote a memo disagreeing. (Esper later said that Trump’s withdrawing too many troops too soon contributed to what we see now in Afghanistan.)
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