Hey there and welcome to Unlimited Hangout on your host Whitney Webb.

Over the past couple of weeks the chaos in Afghanistan has brought the country back to

the forefront of American and international news in a way that we haven't seen in nearly

two decades.

It has also created a rare situation in the US media and political landscape where

all sides seem to agree that the Biden administration bears the responsibility for what is widely

viewed as a debacle and I certainly will not be debating that point in this episode.

However, anytime there is such a rapid and dramatic consensus in American politics and media

it gets my attention.

This is especially true in this case as the same consensus has also involved the dramatic

reversal of the US media's treatment of Joe Biden, who largely up until this point

was praised by the mainstream media for his ice cream flavor preferences and was enabled

by them to maintain the heavily scripted rules that his presidency is not a sad exercise

and elder abuse.

This lockstep shift in consensus and also the way that the media has been portraying

the Afghanistan withdrawal has seemed a bit too scripted for my taste.

There's also the fact that the US empire has been prepping for the withdrawal from Afghanistan

for some time now, with deals having been hammered out between the Taliban and the CIA

among other power players since the so-called peace deal negotiations under Trump.

Even though Trump is no longer in office, I personally find it difficult to believe that

quote unquote permanent organizations like the CIA would throw the results of those negotiations

completely out of the window just because of a change in administration, especially with

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