The inevitable end result of our last 56 years

[Ron Ecker]

8 minutes ago, Robert Wheeler said:

I thought it was "Everyone has a plan 'til I bite off part of his ear."

 

 

[Douglas Caddy]

Rumor has it that Hollywood may remake the movie, "One Flew Over the Cookoo's Nest",  this time featuring the White House as the nest.

https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=one+flew+over+the+cuckoo's+nest+movie&qpvt=one+flew+over+the+cuckoo's+nest+movie&FORM=VDRE

 

[Ron Ecker]

7 minutes ago, Douglas Caddy said:

Rumor has it that Hollywood may remake the movie, "One Flew Over the Cookoo's Nest",  this time featuring the White House as the nest.

https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=one+flew+over+the+cuckoo's+nest+movie&qpvt=one+flew+over+the+cuckoo's+nest+movie&FORM=VDRE

 

The trouble with a remake set in the White House is that they couldn't give Donald Trump a lobotomy. Like Dizzy Dean once said (after being hit in the head by a baseball), "They X-rayed my head and found nothing."

 

 

[Andrew Prutsok]

4 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

Joe,

    I thought Trump was finished after Billy Bush and Access Hollywood released the notorious "Grab 'Em By the Pussy" tape in 2016.  But the tape, obviously, had very little impact on Trump's base-- partly because Fox, Breitbart, and the conservative media have consistently run interference on any negative press about Trump.

     And the M$M (including NYT and WaPo) also colluded bigly in smearing Hillary in 2016, running weekly headline stories about Hillary's Emails.

     My question.  What can possibly put a dent in the fixed delusions of the Trump Cult?

      It's a personality cult, but it is also largely predicated on Caucasian tribalism, xenophobia, and the delusional belief that Don Mar-a-Lago will be good for the economy, and will "deliver the goods."

    

The Pizzagate and Q nutcase stuff were started to deflect from Trump’s participation in child molestation/trafficking/organized crime activities. Pizzagate was started by Wikileaks and Q is the work of foreign intelligence services. 
 

Every charge that comes out of their mouths is projection.

[Chuck Schwartz]

By Charlie Savage, Eric Schmitt and Michael Schwirtz

• June 26, 2020Updated 4:35 p.m. ET
• •  
  •  

WASHINGTON — 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.

Islamist militants, or armed criminal elements closely associated with them, are believed to have collected some bounty money, the officials said. Twenty Americans were killed in combat in Afghanistan in 2019, but it was not clear which killings were under suspicion.

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. Officials developed a menu of potential options — starting with making a diplomatic complaint to Moscow and a demand that it stop, along with an escalating series of sanctions and other possible responses, but the White House has yet to authorize any step, the officials said.

 

An operation to incentivize the killing of American and other NATO troops would be a significant and provocative escalation of what American and Afghan officials have said is Russian support for the Taliban, and it would be the first time the Russian spy unit was known to have orchestrated attacks on Western troops.

Any involvement with the Taliban that resulted in the deaths of American troops would also be a huge escalation of Russia’s 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.

The Kremlin had not been made aware of the accusations, said Dmitry Peskov, the press secretary for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. “If someone makes them, we’ll respond,” Mr. Peskov said. A Taliban spokesman did not respond to messages seeking comment.

Spokespeople at the National Security Council, the Pentagon, the State Department and the C.I.A. declined to comment.

The officials familiar with the intelligence did not explain the White House delay in deciding how to respond to the intelligence about Russia.

 

While some of his closest advisers, like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, have counseled more hawkish policies toward Russia, Mr. Trump has adopted an accommodating stance toward Moscow.

At a summit in 2018 in Helsinki, Finland, Mr. Trump strongly suggested that he believed Mr. Putin’s denial that the Kremlin interfered in the 2016 presidential election, despite broad agreement within the American intelligence establishment that it did. Mr. Trump criticized a bill imposing sanctions on Russia when he signed it into law after Congress passed it by veto-proof majorities. And he has repeatedly made statements that undermined the NATO alliance as a bulwark against Russian aggression in Europe.

The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the delicate intelligence and internal deliberations. They said the intelligence had been treated as a closely held secret, but the administration expanded briefings about it this week — including sharing information about it with the British government, whose forces are among those said to have been targeted.

 

 

Image

President Trump has suggested he believed a denial by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia of Kremlin interference in the 2016 election.Credit...Kirill Kallinikov/Host Photo Agency, via Getty Images

The intelligence assessment is said to be based at least in part on interrogations of captured Afghan militants and criminals. The officials did not describe the mechanics of the Russian operation, such as how targets were picked or how money changed hands. It is also not clear whether Russian operatives had deployed inside Afghanistan or met with their Taliban counterparts elsewhere.

The revelations came into focus inside the Trump administration at a delicate and distracted time. Although officials collected the intelligence earlier in the year, the interagency meeting at the White House took place as the coronavirus pandemic was becoming a crisis and parts of the country were shutting down.

Moreover, as Mr. Trump seeks re-election in November, he wants to strike a peace deal with the Taliban to end the Afghanistan war.

 

Both American and Afghan officials have previously accused Russia of providing small arms and other support to the Taliban that amounts to destabilizing activity, although Russian government officials have dismissed such claims as “idle gossip” and baseless.

“We share some interests with Russia in Afghanistan, and clearly they’re acting to undermine our interests as well,” Gen. John W. Nicholson Jr., the commander of American forces in Afghanistan at the time, said in a 2018 interview with the BBC.

Though coalition troops suffered a spate of combat casualties last summer and early fall, only a few have since been killed. Four Americans were killed in combat in early 2020, but the Taliban have not attacked American positions since a February agreement.

American troops have also sharply reduced their movement outside military bases because of the coronavirus, reducing their exposure to attack.

While officials were said to be confident about the intelligence that Russian operatives offered and paid bounties to Afghan militants for killing Americans, they have greater uncertainty about how high in the Russian government the covert operation was authorized and what its aim may be.

Some officials have theorized that the Russians may be seeking revenge on NATO forces for a 2018 battle in Syria in which the American military killed several hundred pro-Syrian forces, including numerous Russian mercenaries, as they advanced on an American outpost. Officials have also suggested that the Russians may have been trying to derail peace talks to keep the United States bogged down in Afghanistan. But the motivation remains murky.

The officials briefed on the matter said the government had assessed the operation to be the handiwork of Unit 29155, an arm of Russia’s military intelligence agency, known widely as the G.R.U. The unit is linked to the March 2018 nerve agent poisoning in Salisbury, England, of Sergei Skripal, a former G.R.U. officer who had worked for British intelligence and then defected, and his daughter.

 

Western intelligence officials say the unit, which has operated for more than a decade, has been charged by the Kremlin with carrying out a campaign to destabilize the West through subversion, sabotage and assassination. In addition to the 2018 poisoning, the unit was behind an attempted coup in Montenegro in 2016 and the poisoning of an arms manufacturer in Bulgaria a year earlier.

American intelligence officials say the G.R.U. was at the center of Moscow’s covert efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. In the months before that election, American officials say, two G.R.U. cyberunits, known as 26165 and 74455, hacked into Democratic Party servers and then used WikiLeaks to publish embarrassing internal communications.

In part because those efforts were aimed at helping tilt the election in Mr. Trump’s favor, his handling of issues related to Russia and Mr. Putin has come under particular scrutiny. The special counsel investigation found that the Trump campaign welcomed Russia’s intervention and expected to benefit from it, but found insufficient evidence to establish that his associates had engaged in any criminal conspiracy with Moscow.

Operations involving Unit 29155 tend to be much more violent than those involving the cyberunits. Its officers are often decorated military veterans with years of service, in some cases dating to the Soviet Union’s failed war in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Never before has the unit been accused of orchestrating attacks on Western soldiers, but officials briefed on its operations say it has been active in Afghanistan for many years.

Though Russia declared the Taliban a terrorist organization in 2003, relations between them have been warming in recent years. Taliban officials have traveled to Moscow for peace talks with other prominent Afghans, including the former president, Hamid Karzai. The talks have excluded representatives from the current Afghan government as well as anyone from the United States, and at times they have seemed to work at crosscurrents with American efforts to bring an end to the conflict.

The disclosure comes at a time when Mr. Trump has said he would invite Mr. Putin to an expanded meeting of the Group of 7 nations, but tensions between American and Russian militaries are running high.

In several recent episodes, in international territory and airspace from off the coast of Alaska to the Black and Mediterranean Seas, combat planes from each country have scrambled to intercept military aircraft from the other.

Mujib Mashal contributed reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan.

 

 

 

 

 

Continue reading the main story

 

[Kirk Gallaway]

4 hours ago, Chuck Schwartz said:

By Charlie Savage, Eric Schmitt and Michael Schwirtz

• June 26, 2020Updated 4:35 p.m. ET
• •  
  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  

WASHINGTON — 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.

Islamist militants, or armed criminal elements closely associated with them, are believed to have collected some bounty money, the officials said. Twenty Americans were killed in combat in Afghanistan in 2019, but it was not clear which killings were under suspicion.

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. Officials developed a menu of potential options — starting with making a diplomatic complaint to Moscow and a demand that it stop, along with an escalating series of sanctions and other possible responses, but the White House has yet to authorize any step, the officials said.

An operation to incentivize the killing of American and other NATO troops would be a significant and provocative escalation of what American and Afghan officials have said is Russian support for the Taliban, and it would be the first time the Russian spy unit was known to have orchestrated attacks on Western troops.

Any involvement with the Taliban that resulted in the deaths of American troops would also be a huge escalation of Russia’s 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.

The Kremlin had not been made aware of the accusations, said Dmitry Peskov, the press secretary for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. “If someone makes them, we’ll respond,” Mr. Peskov said. A Taliban spokesman did not respond to messages seeking comment.

Spokespeople at the National Security Council, the Pentagon, the State Department and the C.I.A. declined to comment.

The officials familiar with the intelligence did not explain the White House delay in deciding how to respond to the intelligence about Russia.

While some of his closest advisers, like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, have counseled more hawkish policies toward Russia, Mr. Trump has adopted an accommodating stance toward Moscow.

At a summit in 2018 in Helsinki, Finland, Mr. Trump strongly suggested that he believed Mr. Putin’s denial that the Kremlin interfered in the 2016 presidential election, despite broad agreement within the American intelligence establishment that it did. Mr. Trump criticized a bill imposing sanctions on Russia when he signed it into law after Congress passed it by veto-proof majorities. And he has repeatedly made statements that undermined the NATO alliance as a bulwark against Russian aggression in Europe.

The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the delicate intelligence and internal deliberations. They said the intelligence had been treated as a closely held secret, but the administration expanded briefings about it this week — including sharing information about it with the British government, whose forces are among those said to have been targeted.

 

Image

President Trump has suggested he believed a denial by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia of Kremlin interference in the 2016 election.Credit...Kirill Kallinikov/Host Photo Agency, via Getty Images

The intelligence assessment is said to be based at least in part on interrogations of captured Afghan militants and criminals. The officials did not describe the mechanics of the Russian operation, such as how targets were picked or how money changed hands. It is also not clear whether Russian operatives had deployed inside Afghanistan or met with their Taliban counterparts elsewhere.

The revelations came into focus inside the Trump administration at a delicate and distracted time. Although officials collected the intelligence earlier in the year, the interagency meeting at the White House took place as the coronavirus pandemic was becoming a crisis and parts of the country were shutting down.

Moreover, as Mr. Trump seeks re-election in November, he wants to strike a peace deal with the Taliban to end the Afghanistan war.

Both American and Afghan officials have previously accused Russia of providing small arms and other support to the Taliban that amounts to destabilizing activity, although Russian government officials have dismissed such claims as “idle gossip” and baseless.

“We share some interests with Russia in Afghanistan, and clearly they’re acting to undermine our interests as well,” Gen. John W. Nicholson Jr., the commander of American forces in Afghanistan at the time, said in a 2018 interview with the BBC.

Though coalition troops suffered a spate of combat casualties last summer and early fall, only a few have since been killed. Four Americans were killed in combat in early 2020, but the Taliban have not attacked American positions since a February agreement.

American troops have also sharply reduced their movement outside military bases because of the coronavirus, reducing their exposure to attack.

While officials were said to be confident about the intelligence that Russian operatives offered and paid bounties to Afghan militants for killing Americans, they have greater uncertainty about how high in the Russian government the covert operation was authorized and what its aim may be.

Some officials have theorized that the Russians may be seeking revenge on NATO forces for a 2018 battle in Syria in which the American military killed several hundred pro-Syrian forces, including numerous Russian mercenaries, as they advanced on an American outpost. Officials have also suggested that the Russians may have been trying to derail peace talks to keep the United States bogged down in Afghanistan. But the motivation remains murky.

The officials briefed on the matter said the government had assessed the operation to be the handiwork of Unit 29155, an arm of Russia’s military intelligence agency, known widely as the G.R.U. The unit is linked to the March 2018 nerve agent poisoning in Salisbury, England, of Sergei Skripal, a former G.R.U. officer who had worked for British intelligence and then defected, and his daughter.

Western intelligence officials say the unit, which has operated for more than a decade, has been charged by the Kremlin with carrying out a campaign to destabilize the West through subversion, sabotage and assassination. In addition to the 2018 poisoning, the unit was behind an attempted coup in Montenegro in 2016 and the poisoning of an arms manufacturer in Bulgaria a year earlier.

American intelligence officials say the G.R.U. was at the center of Moscow’s covert efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. In the months before that election, American officials say, two G.R.U. cyberunits, known as 26165 and 74455, hacked into Democratic Party servers and then used WikiLeaks to publish embarrassing internal communications.

In part because those efforts were aimed at helping tilt the election in Mr. Trump’s favor, his handling of issues related to Russia and Mr. Putin has come under particular scrutiny. The special counsel investigation found that the Trump campaign welcomed Russia’s intervention and expected to benefit from it, but found insufficient evidence to establish that his associates had engaged in any criminal conspiracy with Moscow.

Operations involving Unit 29155 tend to be much more violent than those involving the cyberunits. Its officers are often decorated military veterans with years of service, in some cases dating to the Soviet Union’s failed war in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Never before has the unit been accused of orchestrating attacks on Western soldiers, but officials briefed on its operations say it has been active in Afghanistan for many years.

Though Russia declared the Taliban a terrorist organization in 2003, relations between them have been warming in recent years. Taliban officials have traveled to Moscow for peace talks with other prominent Afghans, including the former president, Hamid Karzai. The talks have excluded representatives from the current Afghan government as well as anyone from the United States, and at times they have seemed to work at crosscurrents with American efforts to bring an end to the conflict.

The disclosure comes at a time when Mr. Trump has said he would invite Mr. Putin to an expanded meeting of the Group of 7 nations, but tensions between American and Russian militaries are running high.

In several recent episodes, in international territory and airspace from off the coast of Alaska to the Black and Mediterranean Seas, combat planes from each country have scrambled to intercept military aircraft from the other.

Mujib Mashal contributed reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan.

 

 

 

 

Continue reading the main story

 

That's interesting Chuck,  American intelligence says Russians are involved in offering bounties to Afghans to kill Coalition forces , including American soldiers in Afghanistan to throw a wrench in current U.S. Taliban talks, possibly seeing revenge  on Nato forces for a 2018 battle in Syria, in which the American military killed several hundred pro-Syrian forces, including numerous Russian mercenaries.  It's been discussed with Trump and he's not moving on it.

I'd love to think this would be the coup de grace. But it's going to be hard to prove any softness in Trump's position to his subservience to Putin.  But we'll get Jim Di and Jeff  to look into it!

heh heh!

Edited June 27, 2020 by Kirk Gallaway

[Bob Ness]

1 hour ago, Kirk Gallaway said:

That's interesting Chuck,  American intelligence says Russians are involved in offering bounties to Afghans to kill Coalition forces , including American soldiers in Afghanistan to throw a wrench in current U.S. Taliban talks, possibly seeing revenge  on Nato forces for a 2018 battle in Syria, in which the American military killed several hundred pro-Syrian forces, including numerous Russian mercenaries.  It's been discussed with Trump and he's not moving on it.

I'd love to think this would be the coup de grace. But it's going to be hard to prove any softness in Trump's position to his subservience to Putin.  But we'll get Jim Di and Jeff  to look into it!

heh heh!

Whatever happened to Trump's plan to surrender to the Taliban at Camp David? Maybe he should sign the surrender in the Oval Office instead! I think that's why Bolton quit.

[Steve Thomas]

3 hours ago, Kirk Gallaway said:

That's interesting Chuck,  American intelligence says Russians are involved in offering bounties to Afghans to kill Coalition forces , including American soldiers in Afghanistan to throw a wrench in current U.S. Taliban talks, possibly seeing revenge  on Nato forces for a 2018 battle in Syria, in which the American military killed several hundred pro-Syrian forces, including numerous Russian mercenaries.  It's been discussed with Trump and he's not moving on it.

I'd love to think this would be the coup de grace. But it's going to be hard to prove any softness in Trump's position to his subservience to Putin. 

Kirk,

Trump is pulling a third of U.S. forces out of Germany and shifting them to Poland.

Do you think Putin has designs on Poland the way Josef Stalin did?

Steve Thomas

[Steve Thomas]

Donald Trump is going to Mt. Rushmore for July 3rd.

The Sioux nation will be protesting his visit to the Black Hills. (Shades of George Armstrong Custer).

Clouds of tear gas will be wafting over the protesters under the watchful gaze of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.

In the background will be plumes of smoke rising from the wildfires set off by his fireworks in the middle of drought season.

*sigh*

Steve Thomas

[Joe Bauer]

I wonder if upon his July 3rd visit to Mount Rushmore,Trump might suggest the 5th and final carving space available there be used to depict his bust?

I'm serious!

And if he does, his weary damage control WH team will once again tell the world a day later their most used Trump defending line ..."The President was just making a joke."

And if Trump's scowling face bust were carved into Mount RM, is there any chemical that could be applied to the granite to give it an orange tint?

Most U.S. Presidents in our history have one or two legacy quotes or speeches attributed them exclusively over any others.

JFK " Ask Not What Your Country Can Do For You..."

Nixon " I Am Not A Crook."

George Bush "Read My Lips."

Bill Clinton " I Never Had Sex With That Woman...Ms. Lewinski..."

Dwight Eisenhower  - MIC Farewell Speech.

FDR  " ... Nothing To Fear But Fear Itself"

Trump's most well known quote by far?

"You Can Do Anything...Grab Em By The P#$$y."

Kind of says it all, imo.

 

 

[Joe Bauer]

18 hours ago, Kirk Gallaway said:

I don't think you necessarily need a psychiatrist to see that Trump is crazy. But what kind of crazy? Despite his denials Trump follows polls just as any politician. As strange as it sounds, up to now, there was some kind of sense to a lot of Trump's actions at pleasing his base but it's always been about 3/8 of the population base.

Though Trump never leaves off the table he could do something crazy. I tend to think it's just talk. I think he'll run the filthiest campaign in American election history. But I think the majority are hep to him. My guess is that if loses by more than 3%, he goes. It's kind of strange but right now, Biden could beat Trump in his Desi Arnaz pajamas. Maybe even sleep this one out!

Joe, I do tend to agree with William. First I thought when he insulted Mc Cain's 5 year  POW sacrifice, and bashed him for getting caught. I thought that would kill him with his  party. It actually almost did. But then with the pussy grabbing incident, I felt like William, that he can't possibly get elected, but the proof in the pudding was that he actually beat Hillary Clinton with white women.

Yes, I was also dumbfounded when Trump's attack against John McCain as not being a hero didn't ruffle Republican legislators or even our top military leaders anymore than if he ( Trump) was disparaging Rosie O'Donnell.

I believe that in many ways our main stream media could report and paint these outrageously bad Trump actions and words as much more powerfully offensive and wrong than they do, and that they could damage Trump's standing to degrees of consensus calls for him to resign.

You know, the hundreds of Newspaper headlines calling for Clinton's resignation after his perjury verdict? Or calls for Nixon to resign in 1974.

But, nothing like that has occurred with Trump.

His hugely unethical actions and public comments are 100X times more egregious and numerous than any president we have ever seen, yet, they are not met with the media outrage that was bestowed upon Clinton, Nixon, etc.

They are reported. And even condemned but not seriously. Then, these outrageous Trump action and comment incidents are dropped off of the front pages and as everyone knows, the average American attention span is good for about 3 days, if the issues at hand are buried and no longer front page news.

I mention this news media Trump controversy downplaying and numbing in several past threads. It just stinks in it's dereliction imo.

And I know it's so often said, but it's still true. If Obama had uttered or tweeted 1/100th of the outrageous and insulting or inflaming comments Trump has made in his 3 1/2 inglorious years of tweeting and rally comedy routines, calls for his resignation throughout our media would be incessant and long term.

The sexual predator damage to Trump would be much more powerful if it were simply given much more "main stream" coverage than it has. It's been reported of course, but not to any real widespread degree that we saw with Roy Moore in the Alabama senate race.

Increase this coverage and I believe it will be more effecting of women voters, even former Trump voting ones, than it has.

Edited June 27, 2020 by Joe Bauer

[Steve Thomas]

1 hour ago, Joe Bauer said:

I wonder if upon his July 3rd visit to Mount Rushmore,Trump might suggest the 5th and final carving space available there be used to depict his bust?

I'm serious!

 

Joe,

He already has. That's why I was bringing it up.

From the Associated Press:

Native Americans protesting Trump trip to Mount Rushmore

https://apnews.com/50f6bdb9e2fd2349bb39b99c1250b093

"Trump has long shown a fascination with Mount Rushmore. South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem said in 2018 that he once told her straight-faced that it was his dream to have his face carved into the monument. He later joked at a campaign rally about getting enshrined alongside George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln."

Steve Thomas

[Ray Mitcham]

1 hour ago, Steve Thomas said:

Joe,

He already has. That's why I was bringing it up.

From the Associated Press:

Native Americans protesting Trump trip to Mount Rushmore

https://apnews.com/50f6bdb9e2fd2349bb39b99c1250b093

"Trump has long shown a fascination with Mount Rushmore. South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem said in 2018 that he once told her straight-faced that it was his dream to have his face carved into the monument. He later joked at a campaign rally about getting enshrined alongside George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln."

Steve Thomas

If he is remembered on Mount Rushmore it will probably be like this.

[Jeff Carter]

13 hours ago, Kirk Gallaway said:

That's interesting Chuck,  American intelligence says Russians are involved in offering bounties to Afghans to kill Coalition forces , including American soldiers in Afghanistan to throw a wrench in current U.S. Taliban talks, possibly seeing revenge  on Nato forces for a 2018 battle in Syria, in which the American military killed several hundred pro-Syrian forces, including numerous Russian mercenaries.  It's been discussed with Trump and he's not moving on it.

I'd love to think this would be the coup de grace. But it's going to be hard to prove any softness in Trump's position to his subservience to Putin.  But we'll get Jim Di and Jeff  to look into it!

heh heh!

If you haven't noticed, the track record of US intelligence - most particularly anonymous officials speaking to the legacy media - for truthful and verifiable information, most especially since the end of the Cold War, has been rather abysmal. Let's see: atrocities in Yugoslavia, WMD in Iraq, Ghaddaffi engaged in genocide, Assad gassing his own people, Russia hacked the election, Russia poisoned the Skripals, etc etc.  All were proven as utterly false or remain entirely evidence-free. 

As well, John McCain was a vicious war-monger who was photographed several times meeting with al-Qaeda leadership planning the destruction of a secular state in the Middle East. John Bolton is also a vicious war-monger and many of the claims in his lauded new book are proving to be either false or exaggerated. 

signed

The Reality Based Community

[Cliff Varnell]

5 hours ago, Jeff Carter said:

If you haven't noticed, the track record of US intelligence - most particularly anonymous officials speaking to the legacy media - for truthful and verifiable information, most especially since the end of the Cold War, has been rather abysmal. Let's see: atrocities in Yugoslavia, WMD in Iraq, Ghaddaffi engaged in genocide, Assad gassing his own people, Russia hacked the election, Russia poisoned the Skripals, etc etc.  All were proven as utterly false or remain entirely evidence-free. 

As well, John McCain was a vicious war-monger who was photographed several times meeting with al-Qaeda leadership planning the destruction of a secular state in the Middle East. John Bolton is also a vicious war-monger and many of the claims in his lauded new book are proving to be either false or exaggerated. 

signed

The Reality Based Community

Fair points. Formulaic thinking of any kind must be challenged.

Let’s game this out: an element of the US intelligent community ginned up phony evidence to accuse Russians of offering the Taliban bounties on US/NATO soldiers.

According to Trump spokesman Kayleigh McEnany neither Trump or Pence have been briefed on the matter.

Why would such sensational accusations get made if Trump wasn’t briefed? To provide Trump’s enemies with fodder like the following?

If Trump was briefed, why is he lying about it, and why hasn’t he issued a cease and desist demand?

If he wasn’t briefed — why did it take 24hrs to deny the story?

A guy with the rep as a master of optics (and nothing else), the Trumpster looks guilty as hell.

Edited June 28, 2020 by Cliff Varnell