Posted by The DC shooting that killed 20-year-old National Guard soldier Sarah Beckstrom is getting darker by the hour. Investigators now believe the suspect – 29-year-old Afghan veteran Rahmanullah Lakanwal – may have been blackmailed by the Taliban, forced into a suicide mission or watch his family in Afghanistan be tortured or executed. Lakanwal wasn’t some random drifter. He served alongside U.S. Special Forces as part of a CIA-backed paramilitary unit, fought the Taliban directly, and helped evacuate Kabul in 2021. He was screened repeatedly, had no criminal or extremist record, and by all accounts was crushed under the weight of trauma and financial panic. That’s what makes the attack so strange. He drove across the country with a single .357 revolver to target heavily armed troops – a plan that makes zero military sense unless coercion was involved. Intel sources told reporters that Taliban units like Yarmouk 60 have spent 5 years hunting former U.S.-aligned fighters and killing their families – beheadings included. 700 members of CIA-linked Afghan units are believed to be detained and at risk. If that’s the pressure point, the motive shifts from terror ideology to hostage calculus: Kill or your family dies first. Trump and MAGA figures are calling Lakanwal a “monster.” But his life story reads like the U.S. government built a weapon, used it, abandoned it, then acted shocked when the blowback landed 800 yards from the White House. Washington wanted the Afghan war to end. It didn’t. It just came home with a man who apparently ran out of options – and was still being hunted long after America stopped paying attention. Source: Daily Mail
Who Watches the Watchers? 