U.S. intelligence warned Afghan forces were increasingly fragile in run-up to Taliban takeover
CBSN
Washington — Multiple U.S. intelligence assessments issued this spring and summer warned that Afghanistan's security forces appeared increasingly fragile and that its government could struggle to withstand a Taliban-led incursion, according to current and former officials familiar with their content.
Those warnings followed years of consistently pessimistic assessments of the Afghan military's resilience and its ability or willingness to fend off Taliban fighters. Reports from the CIA were often among the bleakest issued, and some were at odds with more favorable Pentagon assessments of the strength of Afghan security forces, three former intelligence officials said. Questions about what the Biden administration was told about conditions on the ground as the U.S. continued its military drawdown have arisen quickly and with fervor, especially as footage of rosier pronouncements made in recent weeks by President Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken has circulated.The Consumer Federal Protection Bureau last week launched an inquiry into what the agency is calling "junk fees in mortgage closing costs." These additional fees, involving home appraisal, title insurance and other services, have spiked in recent years and can add thousands of dollars to the final cost of buying a home.
Retired Maj. Gen. William Anders, the former Apollo 8 astronaut who took the iconic "Earthrise" photo showing the planet as a shadowed blue marble from space in 1968, was killed Friday when the plane he was piloting alone plummeted into the waters off the San Juan Islands in Washington state. He was 90.