BUT NOT AS ROTTEN AS THE ONES TO COME: Weekly Biden Report Card: A no good, rotten week.
Related: Biden Braces for Brutal Loss:
Biden is at Camp David this weekend, not at his Delaware beach house. He can relax there, but also has full comms.
People can come and go without detection, and he avoids the optics of a beach vacation amid a mass evacuation.
The big picture: The U.S. embassy in Kabul wasn’t just a diplomatic building. It also was a major intelligence center with paper records and equipment there that the U.S. will remove or destroy. Protocols are in place for just such an emergency.
Unlike Tehran in 1979, when the Iranian fundamentalists gained access to some sensitive material, the U.S. staff still in Kabul will ensure there’s nothing to gain.
American diplomats at the embassy have been instructed to destroy important papers and desktop computers before they leave, according to a memo obtained by NPR.
Despite the efforts to secure intelligence and safeguard U.S. personnel and their Afghan supporters, Biden must brace for the symbolic defeat of seeing the Taliban overrun the space that housed the embassy.
That includes the ambassador’s residence — and the landmark “Duck and Cover” bar frequented by generations of troops, diplomats and journalists.
The major moment to come: Lowering the American flag that flies over what is essentially sovereign U.S. territory.
Heckuva job, Joey.