[Peace-discuss] Caitlin Johnstone: Democrats ignore US military’s refutation of ‘Russian bounties’ story

[J.B. Nicholson]

https://on.rt.com/aqej --  Caitlin Johnstone: Democrats ignore US military’s 
refutation of ‘Russian bounties’ story

> The US military has been unable to find any evidence that Russia paid bounties on
> US troops to Taliban militants, confirming what was obvious to anyone who hasn’t
> had their brain stem hijacked by mass media-induced Russophobia.
> 
> NBC News reports[1] the following:
> 
> Two months after top Pentagon officials vowed to get to the bottom of whether the
> Russian government bribed the Taliban to kill American service members, the
> commander of troops in the region says a detailed review of all available
> intelligence has not been able to corroborate the existence of such a program.
> 
> “It just has not been proved to a level of certainty that satisfies me,” Gen.
> Frank McKenzie, commander of the U.S. Central Command, told NBC News. McKenzie
> oversees U.S. troops in Afghanistan. The U.S. continues to hunt for new
> information on the matter, he said.
> 
> “We continue to look for that evidence,” the general said. “I just haven’t seen it
> yet. But … it’s not a closed issue.”
> 
> McKenzie’s comments, reflecting a consensus view among military leaders,
> underscores the lack of certainty around a narrative that has been accepted as
> fact by Democrats and other Trump critics, including presidential nominee Joe
> Biden, who has cited Russian bounties in attacks on President Donald Trump.
> 
> 2 months after top Pentagon officials vowed to get to the bottom of whether the
> Russian gov't bribed Taliban to kill US service members, the commander in the
> region says a review of the intel has not been able to corroborate the existence
> of such a program https://t.co/RaiUV2XtHr
>  — NBC News (@NBCNews) September 14,2020[2]
> 
> Like many other critical voices, I said[3] from the beginning that there was no
> reason to believe the Russian bounties narrative and that the mass publication of
> baseless and nonsensical claims circulated anonymously by US intelligence
> operatives constitutes[4] journalistic malpractice. There is no excuse for a reporter
> to ever present anonymous CIA press releases under the guise of news, especially
> when they make no sense; the US-centralized coalition in Afghanistan is a hostile
> occupying force and there is an essentially limitless number of people there who
> require no financial incentive to attack them.
> 
> But this is exactly what happened. Once the news media had reported the
> unsubstantiated rumor given to them by anonymous spies, spinmeisters like Rachel
> Maddow began presenting[5] it as an objective fact that had been fully authenticated,
> and from there the entire Democratic political/media class began months of loudly
> babbling about how suspicious it is that the US president hadn’t confronted
> Vladimir Putin and sanctioned Russia in response to this verified fact.
> 
> And it was never anything of the sort. It was fake. But now aggressions have been
> ramped up against Russia, Trump has been painted as a Putin puppet who hates the
> troops, Senate Democrats have introduced[6] a bill mandating sanctions on any
> Russians involved in this imaginary conspiracy, and legislation has been passed[7]
> making it harder for Trump to withdraw troops from Afghanistan.
> 
> The story did its job, and now that it’s proven false the same people who promoted
> it are uniformly ignoring the new evidence which clearly shows it to have been
> bogus.
> 
> NYT "Russian bounties" report dropped on June 26. Do you think any of those who
> spent the summer screaming about Russian bounties will comment on, or even
> acknowledge, the top commander of US forces in Afghanistan saying that, after a
> lengthy investigation, there's no evidence? pic.twitter.com/0MfuwGEtm7
>  — Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) September 14, 2020[8]
> 
> This story has been so ubiquitously promoted within the establishment liberal echo
> chamber that it’s impossible to list all the dishonest portrayals it’s been given
> since June, but to pick just a few recent examples:
> 
> * Here’s a recent viral interview[9] by Atlantic's Anne Applebaum with former FBI 
> agent Peter Strzok in which he falsely cites Trump’s refusal to strike back at 
> Russia over the Taliban bounties as evidence that the president is “compromised” 
> toward the Kremlin.
> 
> * Here’s Biden falsely attacking Trump[10] for not confronting Putin about the 
> bounties story.
> 
> * Here’s sitting US Senator Richard Blumenthal[11] falsely claiming “Intelligence 
> powerfully shows that the Kremlin offered the Taliban bounties for killing 
> Americans in Afghanistan.”
> 
> * Here’s sitting US Senator Tammy Duckworth[12] falsely saying “Donald Trump has gone
> 80 days without condemning Putin for putting reported bounties on our troops.”
> 
> * Here’s sitting US Congressman Ted Lieu[13] falsely claiming “Putin paid money to the
> Taliban to kill US troops.”
> 
> * Here’s MSNBC star Joy Reid[14] falsely asking why the president won’t “condemn 
> Russia for putting bounties on our troops.”
> 
> * Here’s renowned Harvard professor Laurence Tribe[15] falsely claiming that Putin 
> “offered bounties on American troops killed in Afghanistan.”
> 
> Again, that’s just a very few very recent examples. Now that their claims have 
> proven false, how many of these highly influential people do you think are using 
> their massive platforms to spread awareness of this fact? Take a wild guess. >
> If you said zero, you are correct. In fact Democratic Party influencers are even
> continuing to promote the debunked Russian bounties story many hours after the
> report debunking it became available on mainstream platforms. Andrew Bates,
> Director of Rapid Response for the Biden campaign, just tweeted[16] that “Trump is
> giving Russia a pass for putting bounties on the heads of American service
> members.”
> 
> At a time when Trump is giving Russia a pass for putting bounties on the heads of
> American service members.Team Trump needs so much reminding: this is
> A-M-E-R-I-C-A."Trump ad asks people to support the troops. But it uses a picture
> of Russian jets" https://t.co/7CxCWBfXp7
>  — Andrew Bates (@AndrewBatesNC) September 15, 2020[16]
> 
> Again, this is hours after it’s been public knowledge that this is a completely
> false thing to assert.
> 
> And we can absolutely expect this to continue. We can absolutely expect
> establishment Democrats to continue bleating about Russian bounties in Afghanistan
> for as long as it is politically convenient to do so. They never[17] let the lack of
> evidence for their position get in the way before, and they won’t let it get in
> the way now. The arguments that they make for their power-serving position are not
> designed to reflect truth or reality, they are designed to serve power. That’s
> exactly what echo chambers are for.
> 
> An email published by WikiLeaks[18] in 2016 was sent by Democratic Party insider John
> Podesta to billionaires George Soros, Peter Lewis, John Sperling, and Herb and
> Marion Sandler in 2007 with a detailed and structured overview of material the
> group had covered during a meeting they’d had in September (to read the email
> click ‘Attachments’ and then ‘2008 Combined Fundraising, Message and Mobilization
> Plan’). Among the things these powerful manipulators discussed was the creation of
> a “robust echo chamber” to be used in the party’s interests.
> 
> On page two of the attachment:
> 
> “Control the political discourse. So much effort over the past few years has been
> focused on better coordinating, strengthening, and developing progressive
> institutions and leaders. Now that this enhanced infrastructure is in place —
> grassroots organizing; multi-issue advocacy groups; think tanks; youth outreach;
> faith communities; micro-targeting outfits; the netroots and blogosphere — we need
> to better utilize these networks to drive the content of politics through a strong
> “echo chamber” and message delivery system.”
> 
> And on page four:
> 
> “Create a robust echo chamber with progressive messaging that spans from the
> opposition campaigns to outside groups, academic experts, and bloggers.”
> 
> Usually when you see the names Podesta and Soros presented together it just means
> you stumbled into a bad corner of the internet pervaded by sloppy thinking and an
> irrational trust in anonymous 8chan posts, but in this WikiLeaks email we actually
> get a useful glimpse into the reason people can keep babbling about something
> that’s completely divorced from the truth without being smashed by cognitive
> dissonance. The fact that echo chambers are actively created by establishment
> manipulators enables establishment-friendly narratives to remain afloat long after
> evidence should have sunk them.
> 
> Read the comments from liberals on this tweet from July. They were all 100%
> certain there was proof that Russia had paid bounties on US troops to
> Taliban-linked fighters, because people like @Maddow[19] told them so. Now the top US
> commander in Afghanistan says there's no evidence. https://t.co/IJNDq1PPyK
>  — Caitlin Johnstone ⏳ (@caitoz) September 14, 2020[20]
> 
> Several weeks ago I tweeted[21] “It’s clear that ‘Russia paid bounties to Taliban
> fighters’ is one of those narratives the propagandists decided to ram into
> mainstream consciousness until they force it to become consensus orthodoxy by
> repetition and sheer force of will, with zero interest in facts or evidence.”
> 
> This has indeed happened, and it will continue to happen. The oligarchs who rule
> over us have so thoroughly divorced the information ecosystem from truth that they
> can get people to believe just about anything. They do this because they
> understand that humans are storytelling animals and you control the humans by
> controlling the stories. We will be unable to fight lies with truth until we
> collectively understand this fact as well as our oppressors.


[1] 
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/u-s-commander-intel-still-hasn-t-established-russia-paid-n1240020
[2] https://twitter.com/NBCNews/status/1305547377437224960
[3] 
https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2020/06/27/mentally-replace-everything-before-u-s-intelligence-says-with-blah-blah-were-probably-lying/
[4] 
https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/this-russia-afghanistan-story-is-western-propaganda-at-its-most-vile-abe6084845f2
[5] https://twitter.com/aaronjmate/status/1305570430925766657
[6] 
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-afghanistan-bounties-senate/democrats-plan-bill-requiring-response-to-reported-russian-bounties-idUSKBN2612DB
[7] https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1305625923656577036
[8] https://twitter.com/aaronjmate/status/1305625704214732801
[9] http://archive.is/74I7W#selection-1179.0-1181.134
[10] 
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/29/russia-bounties-biden-blasts-trump-over-putin-call-and-afghanistan.html
[11] https://twitter.com/SenBlumenthal/status/1304110027792420871
[12] https://twitter.com/SenDuckworth/status/1305521067356717063
[13] https://twitter.com/tedlieu/status/1304113946958282753
[14] https://twitter.com/JoyAnnReid/status/1304177825268801537
[15] https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/1304081358554267650
[16] https://twitter.com/AndrewBatesNC/status/1305665426534301696
[17] https://twitter.com/caitoz/status/1305651973341896704
[18] https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/59125
[19] https://twitter.com/maddow
[20] https://twitter.com/caitoz/status/1305651973341896704
[21] https://twitter.com/caitoz/status/1289917590911950849