The NYT, Joe Biden, and Emily Litella
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did we say that? oh!
About that Russian bounty story? Never mind!
American intelligence officials have concluded that a Russian military intelligence unit secretly offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants for killing coalition forces in Afghanistan — including targeting American troops — amid the peace talks to end the long-running war there, according to officials briefed on the matter. The United States concluded months ago that the Russian unit, which has been linked to assassination attempts and other covert operations in Europe intended to destabilize the West or take revenge on turncoats, had covertly offered rewards for successful attacks last year.
Of course, the media flew into their typical frenzies, and (I know you'll be shocked about this) then-candidate Biden quickly used the story to hammer President Trump in the most obscene and despicable ways... even for him.
—snip —
Biden prefaced his attack on Trump with a lame "if that's true" caveat referring to the New York Times report and then laid into Trump with a hysterical and despicable condemnation.
"President Trump, the commander-in-chief of American troops serving in a dangerous theater of war, has known about this for months according to The Times and done worse than nothing," he said. "Not only has he failed to sanction or impose any kind of consequences on Russia for this egregious violation of international law, Donald Trump has continued his embarrassing campaign of deference and debasing himself before Vladimir Putin."
"This is beyond the pale," Biden continued to rant. "It's a betrayal of the most sacred duty we bear as a nation: to protect and equip our troops when we send them into harm's way."
"It's a betrayal of every single American family with a loved one serving in Afghanistan or anywhere overseas and I'm quite frankly outraged by the report. If I'm elected president make no mistake about it Vladimir Putin will be confronted and will impose a serious cost on Russia."
Intelligence agencies usually designate a report as having “low confidence” because it’s little more than gossip. But the calls for charging Trump with treason never stopped.
It was a blockbuster story about Russia’s return to the imperial “Great Game” in Afghanistan. The Kremlin had spread money around the longtime central Asian battlefield for militants to kill remaining U.S. forces. It sparked a massive outcry from Democrats and their #resistance amplifiers about the treasonous Russian puppet in the White House whose admiration for Vladimir Putin had endangered American troops.
But on Thursday, the Biden administration announced that U.S. intelligence only had “low to moderate” confidence in the story after all. Translated from the jargon of spyworld, that means the intelligence agencies have found the story is, at best, unproven—and possibly untrue.
Over Trump’s four years in office, it’s impossible to point to a single story that did the most political damage to the president. This was just another in a long line of unproven assertions by the media that we knew all along was in the tank for Joe Biden.
— snip —
“We have noted our conclusion of the review that we conducted on the bounties issue and we have conveyed through diplomatic, intelligence, and military channels strong, direct messages on this issue, but we are not specifically tying the actions we are taking today to that matter,” a senior administration official told reporters in reference to the bounty claims.
According to the officials on Thursday’s call, the reporting about the alleged “bounties” came from “detainee reporting” – raising the specter that someone told their U.S.-aligned Afghan jailers what they thought was necessary to get out of a cage. Specifically, the official cited “information and evidence of connections to criminal agents in Afghanistan and elements of the Russian government” as sources for the intelligence community’s assessment.
Without additional corroboration, such reporting is notoriously unreliable.
Obviously, the Times didn’t get “additional corroboration.” They saw a juicy anti-Trump story and ran it without checking it.
“All the news that’s fit to fake.”