[imagesource: Defense One]

The scenes that played out earlier this week, as desperate Afghanis clung to a plane on the runway at Kabul’s airport before it took to the sky, will live in infamy.

Footage showed bodies falling from a US Air Force transport plane, after it had taken off.

An unnamed South African contractor on the ground in Kabul described “apocalyptic scenes” at the airport, with the sound of gunfire ringing out.

One image, showing the inside of a US Air Force C-17 Globemaster III, has been widely shared.

That’s it above in part, but if you want to fully appreciate how rammed that plane was, the full image is warranted:

Image: Defense One

Here’s Defense One:

[The plane] safely evacuated some 640 Afghans from Kabul late Sunday, according to U.S. defense officials…

That’s believed to be among the most people ever flown in the C-17, a massive military cargo plane that has been operated by the U.S. and its allies for nearly three decades. Flight tracking software shows the plane belongs to the 436th Air Wing, based at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.

The C-17, using the call sign Reach 871, was not intending to take on such a large load, but panicked Afghans who had been cleared to evacuate pulled themselves onto the C-17’s half-open ramp, one defense official said.

Rather than trying to force people from the plane, the crew made the decision to go.

In the panic, the crew estimated that there were around 800 people on board, which we know because of audio from an air traffic controller.

CNN covered that audio, and the C-17 flight, in the first four minutes of the video below:

The crew on the flight above may have saved many lives, but the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan has been a monumental tactical and humanitarian failure from President Joe Biden, as well as his predecessors, with 20 years of warmongering leaving the region no better off than before.

How could the Taliban takeover happen so rapidly?

Here’s a handy segment from VICE News, unpacking where things stood as of yesterday:

[sources:cnn&defenseone]