Russia offered bounty to kill UK soldiers | World news | The Guardian
Putin's a nice fella, isn't he?
Russia offered bounty to kill UK soldiers | World news | The Guardian
Putin's a nice fella, isn't he?
Who knows that we didn't do the same during the Russian Afghan war?
...the Taliban will, of course, happily accept cash to kill and are adept at playing one side off against another: India vs Pakistan, Tajiks vs Pathans, US vs Russians...whoever wants to play in their arena...for most tribal groupings in such a resource-poor backwater, it's another source of income in addition to extortion, kidnapping and production of bomb vests...
Majestically enthroned amid the vulgar herd
What goes around comes around, e'hh?
There they go again: NYT serves up spy fantasy about Russian ‘bounties’ on US troops in Afghanistan
Brace yourselves for another breathless Russia bombshell: The New York Times says US spies think Moscow may have offered Taliban bounty money to kill US troops in Afghanistan and Trump was told but did nothing about it! Impeach!
“American intelligence officials have concluded that a Russian military intelligence unit secretly offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants for killing coalition forces in Afghanistan,” begins the story, published on Friday afternoon, and citing “officials briefed on the matter.”
This “intelligence finding” was briefed to President Donald Trump in late March, but the White House “has yet to authorize” any of the proposed responses, according to the Times.
Frank Figliuzzi
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@FrankFigliuzzi1
Breaking: Putin has been trying to kill US troops, and Trump knows it: Russia Secretly Offered Afghan Militants Bounties to Kill U.S. Troops, Intelligence Says - The New York Times #PutinsPuppet Russia Secretly Offered Afghan Militants Bounties to Kill U.S. Troops, Intelligence Says - The New York Times …Within minutes, a former FBI official (now working at NBC) was declaring Trump “Putin’s puppet,” while Congressman Ted Lieu (D-California) said the lack of response “suggests [Trump] may be beholden to Putin.”American troops in Afghanistan have been the target of some Taliban operations backed by Russia, intelligence officials found.
Russia Secretly Offered Afghan Militants Bounties to Kill U.S. Troops, Intelligence Says
The Trump administration has been deliberating for months about what to do about a stunning intelligence assessment.
nytimes.com
The story itself – hidden behind the Times’s paywall, of course, so the commoners not subscribed to their unmatched wisdom can only go on the clickbaity headline – is that the unnamed US intelligence officials “concluded” that a Russian unit “linked to” a massive conspiracy against the West secretly offered money to the Taliban, and “Islamist militants, or armed criminal elements closely associated with them, are believed to have collected” some of it at some point, maybe.Ted Lieu
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@tedlieu
US House candidate, CA-33
If true this is outrageous conduct by Russia. Lack of a response by @realDonaldTrump suggests he may be beholden to Putin. @POTUS is putting US troops’ lives at risk by doing nothing. Having served on active duty, I find this behavior by our Commander in Chief to be unacceptable. https://twitter.com/natashabertrand/...08189006589952 …
Natasha Bertrand
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@NatashaBertrand
Holy cow. “The intelligence finding was briefed to President Trump, and the White House’s National Security Council discussed the problem at an interagency meeting in late March, the officials said...the White House has yet to authorize any” response. Russia Secretly Offered Afghan Militants Bounties to Kill U.S. Troops, Intelligence Says - The New York Times …
This assessment is “said to be based at least in part on interrogations of captured Afghan militants and criminals,” who are totally trustworthy and would not at all ever say anything to try and avoid torture in Afghan prisons, globally known as bastions of human rights and democracy.
You’re not supposed to notice all the qualifiers and weasel words, however, but focus on the razzle-dazzle “facts” such as the entirely baseless claim that Russia is conducting a “so-called hybrid war against the United States, a strategy of destabilizing adversaries through a combination of such tactics as cyberattacks, the spread of fake news and covert and deniable military operations.” This assertion, by the way, is mentioned in passing as an established and unquestionable fact, a favorite tactic of propaganda-peddlers anywhere.
But wait, there’s more. The anonymous officials said the spies had “assessed” the operation to be the work of “Unit 29155” of the “GRU,” which is “linked to the March 2018 nerve agent poisoning in Salisbury” – the infamous Skripal incident that the UK “highly likely” declared the work of Russia and then treated that assertion as fact. Supposedly, there is “uncertainty” among US spies whether this is a rogue operation or one authorized from the very top of the Kremlin.Aaron Maté
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@aaronjmate
The US intel claim that Moscow waged a covert operation to elect Trump & "sow chaos" laid the basis for a fear-mongering campaign against Russia that very few liberals are skeptical of. Every claim, like this one, is now taken on faith: Russia Secretly Offered Afghan Militants Bounties to Kill U.S. Troops, Intelligence Says - The New York Times …
American troops in Afghanistan have been the target of some Taliban operations backed by Russia, intelligence officials found.
Russia Secretly Offered Afghan Militants Bounties to Kill U.S. Troops, Intelligence Says
The Trump administration has been deliberating for months about what to do about a stunning intelligence assessment.
nytimes.com
If you can’t trust anonymous intelligence officials, after all, who can you trust? It’s not as if the US “intelligence community” had accused Russia of “hacking our democracy” based on a dodgy dossier written by a British spy and paid for by Hillary Clinton’s campaign, in order to get the FBI to spy on President Donald Trump’s campaign before and after the 2016 election, right? All based on “assessments” and beliefs, no less! We should totally trust them when they talk about rogue spy operations – in Russia, obviously, what did you think I was suggesting?
Besides, it’s not as if the New York Times – that bastion of truth-telling that earned numerous Pulitzers for ‘Russiagate’ coverage – could ever print something that wasn’t thoroughly vetted and properly sourced, right? I mean, the story has four – four – bylines, and the newsroom did not revolt the way they had over the recent op-ed by Senator Tom Cotton, so it must be unimpeachably true!
Buried deep inside the story is the admission that the Taliban “have not attacked American positions” since February, after the US signed an agreement with the militants to withdraw from Afghanistan. That, by the way, was greeted with wailing and gnashing of the teeth by the US political establishment – including the Times – which has been committed to having other people fight and die in Afghanistan forever in the name of democracy, human rights or... something. Clearly, Trump is only pulling out of there not because he disapproves of Americans dying in endless foreign wars but because of Russia!
By all means, go ahead and take at face value the evidence-free assertions of a newspaper whose mendacious 1619 Project is in great part responsible for setting US race relations on fire, and the country with them – and sourced to anonymous spies who have been consistently and terrifyingly wrong on just about everything. Enough of you have done it enough of the time so far, and look how well it has worked out!
There they go again: NYT serves up spy fantasy about Russian ‘bounties’ on US troops in Afghanistan — RT Op-ed
i can't take credit for it....but yeah, it's great.
he'll have no choice to say something eventually. he's probably putting together some sort of lie right now.
btw, the white house is claiming the NYT story is wrong and that he was never told about it.....i'd wager it was in the PDB multiple times, but he lazy fuck never reads it.
Trump's gonna love this.
Did the Americans forget about.
Operation Cyclone
I read today those Lincoln project ads infuriate him. The put them on fox just when they know he'll be watching.
I'm surprised Fox accepts them.
It was here already 3 years ago... (Russiagate is always good to make use of, Weapons of Mass Distraction...)
US claims that Russia is arming Taliban are smokescreen for own mistakes in Afghanistan - Moscow
29 Sep, 2017 12:55 / Updated 2 years ago
The US accusations that Russia is supplying arms to the Taliban terror group are aimed at diverting attention from blunders which the Americans in Afghanistan made themselves, Russia’s Foreign ministry said.
“The US generals continue the vicious practice of keeping afloat the issue of mythical Russian assistance to the militants from the Taliban movement,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement, adding that the American accusations “are not backed with any proof at all.”
“This gives the clear impression that the US attempts to slander Russia in the Afghan context are being undertaken in order to divert the attention of the international community away from its own numerous mistakes, committed during the 16-year stay in Afghanistan,” the Ministry’s statement reads.
Moscow’s comments come after US Defense Secretary, James Mattis, again raised the issue during his trip to Kabul earlier this week, warning Russia against supplying arms to the Taliban.
The ministry underlined that NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, who was present at Mattis’s press-conference in the Afghan capital, “had already stated publicly that the block has no evidence of any assistance from Moscow to the Taliban movement.”
Russia has labeled the accusations by Mattis “inappropriate,” saying the Americans themselves have a lot to clarify regarding their alleged cooperation with militants in Afghanistan.
“At the same time, our questions regarding the flights of ‘unidentified’ aircraft in the US- and NATO-controlled airspace of Afghanistan in the interests of Islamic State [IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL] and other militant groupings remain unanswered,” the statement read.
Accusations that Russia might be arming the Taliban first surfaced in spring, voiced by several American generals, including the commander of alliance forces in Europe, Curtis Scaparrotti, and head of US troops in Afghanistan, John W. Nicholson Jr.
In July, CNN released videos of Taliban factions in various parts of Afghanistan claiming to be in possession of weapons that they said originated from Russian government sources.
However, the US broadcaster acknowledged that “the videos don't provide incontrovertible proof” that Moscow has been dealing with the Taliban.
Moscow has repeatedly denied unsubstantiated US claims, with Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova saying earlier that it was nothing but a deliberate “disinformation campaign.”
US claims that Russia is arming Taliban are smokescreen for own mistakes in Afghanistan - Moscow — RT World News
Russian Embassy ridicules Pulitzer Board for awarding prize to NYT’s ‘undiluted fabrications’
5 May, 2020 16:57 / Updated 1 month ago
FILE PHOTO: An opposition-provided photograph shows the aftermath of an alleged Russian airstrike in Idlib, Syria, July 16, 2019 © Reuters
The New York Times’ staff have won a prestigious Pulitzer Prize for “exposing the predations of Vladimir Putin’s regime.” Russia, however, says the paper made it up.
The Pulitzer Prize Board loves a good yarn about Russia, and the New York Times certainly feeds their appetite. 2017 saw the paper score an award for reporting on the Kremlin’s online “troll army;” while 2018 saw it honored for reporting on Russia’s “interference in the 2016 presidential election and its connections to the Trump campaign” – even though these allegations were flimsily sourced and in many cases found false, even by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s ‘Russiagate’ investigators.
After a break last year, on Monday the Prize Board resumed where they left off, bestowing their ‘International Reporting’ award – along with $15,000 – upon the New York Times’ staff, “for a set of enthralling stories, reported at great risk, exposing the predations of Vladimir Putin’s regime.”
Among the stories were more tales of “troll factories,” spy stories backed up by faceless intelligence agents and “anonymous sources,” and the piece de resistance: a tragic and gruesome tale of Russian warplanes bombing a civilian camp in Syria a year earlier, backed up by social media chatter and local “plane spotters.”
“We consider this series of articles by the New York Times about Russia as an excellent collection of undiluted Russophobic fabrications that can be studied as a guide for creating false facts,” Russia’s Embassy in Washington DC wrote on Facebook on Tuesday.
The embassy’s statement is not the first time the Russian government has countered these stories; the bombing story in particular was ridiculed by Russia’s Defense Ministry last year. While the Times claimed to have heard the pilots radio in their coordinates and speak of completing their mission, the ministry stated that it is not Air Force practice to communicate on open radio. Rather, the ministry claimed that the Times got hoodwinked by anti-government forces on the ground, who fed information to the paper to further their own agenda.
The Times’ prize-winning coverage also included a video feature on Russia’s alleged bombing of Syrian hospitals, again backed up by radio chatter. One of the ‘underground hospitals’, however, turned out to be a remote and fortified terrorist bunker, the Russian Defense Ministry claimed. The paper, it said, had again been fooled by rebels pushing their own anti-government narrative.
The paper and the Pulitzer panel also riled up readers at home with an award for the Times’ controversial ‘1619 Project’ – a long-form reframing of American history as “racist,” which asserts that black Amercians, and not the Founding Fathers, shaped US democracy as we know it. The historical accuracy of the project has been questioned, as have some of its wildest claims – for instance, that slavery directly caused the 2008 financial crash, or that modern medicine is rooted in 17th century racial prejudices.
All in all, the Times took home three Pulitzer prizes on Monday, bringing its total to 130 since the award was established in 1917.
Russian Embassy ridicules Pulitzer Board for awarding prize to NYT’s ‘undiluted fabrications’ — RT USA News
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