Appearing on Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures” for an interview, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia turned a question about the fight over who will be Speaker of the House into a tirade about America’s potentially having accidentally armed Hamas by leaving weapons behind in Afghanistan and shipping masses of military equipment to Ukraine.
As background, America left behind about $7 billion of military equipment in Afghanistan when it fled. That includes both American military equipment and military equipment meant for the Afghan National Army that survived its brief and futile attempt to stop the Taliban and then was left for the Taliban to use.
“US-funded equipment valued at $7.12 billion was in the inventory of the former Afghan government when it collapsed, much of which has since been seized by the Taliban,” the US Department of Defence said in its report in August 2022
Many allege that it is now being used by Hamas in Israel, with photos having emerged of M-16 and M-6-style rifles being used by the Palestinian militants, which would indicate that they were originally US aid to somewhere, though whether from Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, or elsewhere is as yet unclear.
The Afghanistan equipment is not the only issue, as, in May of this year, Newsweek quoted a commander in the Israel Defense Forces as saying that his country is concerned that weapons originally supplied to the Ukrainians would end up in the hands of Israel’s enemies, namely Hamas. There has not yet been any evidence that weapons sent to Ukraine ended up in the region, much less in the hands of Hamas.
Well, that led to Rep. Greene asking questions about from where Hamas’ arms were coming. She did so on Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures” when responding to FNC host Maria Bartiromo, who asked, “Who are you supporting for speaker?”
Greene, in response, first said, “I’m talking with the people that are running for speaker. The issues are important to me. I have a bill that would stop transgender surgeries on children. And that bill has been sitting in the Judiciary Committee for quite some time now. And I would like to see it marked up and taken to the floor for a vote. So that’s an issue I’m pushing.”
She then got onto the question of from where the weapons Hamas is using came, saying, “I’m also continuing to push to stop funding the war in Ukraine and push those countries to peace. And now, with what’s happening in Israel, we’re looking at a whole different situation. I want to track the serial numbers of the weapons that Hamas is using against Israel. And I want to know if they came from Afghanistan or if they came from weapons that we provided to Ukraine. So these are answers that I want from whoever’s running for speaker.”
Donald Trump Jr. suggested something similar, asking, “Those look a lot more like American M-4s than the usual AK-47 we are used to seeing in the Middle East. Could these be from the stockpile of +\- 70,000 fully automatic machine guns we left the Taliban?”
Those look a lot more like American M-4s than the usual AK-47 we are used to seeing in the Middle East. Could these be from the stockpile of +- 70,000 fully automatic machine guns we left the Taliban? pic.twitter.com/tVPUPqOtbp
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) October 7, 2023
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