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  1. #351
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    [Crickets]

    Yeah, that's what I thought, you cowardly turd. Run the way the way you always do when your side steps in dog .
    I was going to answer you but I thought I should wait a while for your manic episode to calm. Then I forgot about you, sorry bout that. Seems your still in a manic state tho.

    What is your official diagnosis? I'm guessing bipolar depression amirite?

  2. #352
    I am that guy RandomGuy's Avatar
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    I was going to answer you but I thought I should wait a while for your manic episode to calm. Then I forgot about you, sorry bout that. Seems your still in a manic state tho.

    What is your official diagnosis? I'm guessing bipolar depression amirite?
    Easier to go on a personal attack than answer an uncomfortable question, I guess. Deflect and spin.

  3. #353
    I am that guy RandomGuy's Avatar
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    ...
    Last edited by RandomGuy; 07-02-2020 at 03:29 PM. Reason: weird double post

  4. #354
    wrong about pizzagate TSA's Avatar
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    So basically what you are saying is that people who know the damage Russia is doing, and trying to do to the US are trying to stop Trump from helping Putin do it?

    That's your play.

    Trump acts more like an asset with ever day he says nothing.
    Which people are you saying know for a fact that Russia was paying bounties? Be specific. Schiff obviously wasn't concerned.
    [Crickets]

    Yeah, that's what I thought, you cowardly turd. Run the way the way you always do when your side steps in dog .

  5. #355
    Alleged Michigander ChumpDumper's Avatar
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    TSA moves the goalpost.

  6. #356
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  7. #357
    SeaGOAT midnightpulp's Avatar
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    Trump wasn't briefed because the intelligence wasn't corroborated.
    Yes, according to his handpicked officials. Feel free to believe that if you want.

    the Trump administration announced Ratcliffe as one of the congressional members of his impeachment team.
    President Trump announced the appointment of Esper as Acting Secretary of Defense on June 18, 2019, after Acting Secretary Patrick Shanahan decided to withdraw his nomination.[3]
    The intelligence being shared with the British doesn't prove anything
    Neither of us can prove anything here. We're both doing speculation and trying to deduce what happened. I believe it stands to reason if the British knew, then Trump knew, as well.

    So we're back to he said/she said. Trump and his administration of handpicked lackeys has zero credibility with me, so I'm going to believe the anon leakers over any "official" word from the White House. We have to ask why Trump has never been hard on Putin? Here's a dictator who annexed a sovereign territory, was kicked out of the G8 because of it, and yet Trump is urging for Russia's return to the G8 and basically fellates Putin any chance he gets. Then, yeah, there's the issue of the troop withdrawal from Germany. Why? Trump, his admin, and the fanboys will claim it's because he's trying to reduce our military presence around the world and pressure our allies to pay more for their own defense, and I do agree with that, but why Germany first and not Italy, the UK, Japan? Oh:

    https://www.businessinsider.com/pull...sia-win-2020-6
    https://republicans-armedservices.ho...%20Germany.pdf

    At his meeting with Duda, Trump also questioned why the US is "supposed to defend Germany from Russia" and said German citizens are not happy about the situation.
    I await some spin like this, and a claim of Trump is "doing the right thing!"

    "Germany's delinquent, they've been delinquent for years," Trump told reporters at the White House. “They owe NATO billions of dollars and they have to pay it.”

    Under NATO rules, countries have committed to spend at least 2 percent of their annual defense budgets on the alliance. Germany has not yet reached that goal. The country did spend 1.36 percent of its gross domestic product on the NATO allianc in 2019, though, because of its size, the country spends more on its military than its European neighbors.
    "See, Trump is holding them accountable!"

    Then why no troop withdrawal from Italy, the UK, Japan (I know they're not in NATO), and such who are well below the 2 percent of GDP on defense as required by Dear Leader?

    *As of 2015. The UK has fallen below the mark now. https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/...617536/photo/1

    There's just too much cir stantial smoke here to not think there might be a fire raging underneath with regard to Trump and Russia. And my thoughts here is that when it comes down to he said/she said scenario, where neither side has definitive proof, the side with the most cir stantial evidence in its corner is likely to be right (of course we can't convict this way in a court-of-law). Boiled down. Trump was briefed. He didn't act because he's soft on Russia. Him being soft on Russia is illustrated by his general at ude toward Russia, his recent inviting them to the G7 (when every other member was against it), and his troop withdrawal from Germany first.

    And I also think this recent article illustrates the bounty threat was probably credible. Russia has been funding and equipping the Taliban for years.

    While the Kremlin maintains that its relationship with the Taliban is limited only to fighting ISKP and reconciliation within Afghanistan, its activities go much deeper. Russia has been accused of funding and arming the Taliban. Russian night vision sniper scopes have been discovered in the hands of the Taliban. In 2017, Gen. John Nicholson, then-commander of the NATO-led Resolute Support Mission in Afghanistan, revealed in a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing that Russia was actively funding the Taliban and therefore, by proxy, al Qaeda. In 2018, Nicholson followed that up by stating, “We’ve had weapons brought to this headquarters and given to us by Afghan leaders and [they] said, ‘This was given by the Russians to the Taliban.’”

    Perhaps more alarming are reports that Russia is funneling resources into Afghanistan that can be sold for profit by the Taliban. This includes shipping fuel tankers from Uzbekistan through the Hairatan border crossing, where they are delivered to Taliban front companies that sell fuel worth $2.5 million per month. The Taliban distribute the money directly to their commanders to use and launch attacks against the Afghan government, forces, and civilians.
    https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/07/01...es-bountygate/

    SMOKE

    Not an illogical leap to conclude they were also paying bounties.

    Same goes for any Democrat. If the Schiff story has legs (lol Federalist, though), investigate his ass, too.
    Last edited by midnightpulp; 07-02-2020 at 09:04 PM.

  8. #358
    SeaGOAT midnightpulp's Avatar
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    Which people are you saying know for a fact that Russia was paying bounties? Be specific. Schiff obviously wasn’t concerned.
    Unfair question. You for sure know that intelligence operatives can't disclose their iden ies. Trump tried this play, too. "The anonymous leak needs to come forward!" So what we're left with is "official" word from administration yes men who are trying to run cover.

    WASHINGTON — The CIA knew. The State Department knew. Senior congressional officials and the British government were briefed.

    So how could it be that nobody told the president?

    White House officials offered a new wrinkle Wednesday in their explanation of why President Donald Trump wasn't informed about intelligence collected this year that suggested that the Russians were paying the Taliban to kill Americans, even though officials in both the U.S. and the U.K. were aware of the reporting.
    But intelligence is almost always "unverified." And the idea that a career government bureaucrat unilaterally decided to keep Trump out of the loop on the Russian bounty matter — even though he was in regular phone contact with Russian President Vladimir Putin — isn't credible, current and former national security officials said.
    And maybe he wasn't briefed. But it's for different reasons than you might think.

    Critics suggested a troubling scenario. "I believe ... his staff was afraid to tell him about it for fear he would erupt and do something damaging, like calling Putin and tipping him off," said Jeffrey Smith, a former general counsel to the CIA.

    The national security team often strategizes long and hard before the Oval Office sessions about what and what not to say, current and former officials said, because team members know certain subjects can provoke an eruption that will send things off the rails.


    And I believe that is indeed "credible." He's a in' manchild.

  9. #359
    wrong about pizzagate TSA's Avatar
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    Yes, according to his handpicked officials. Feel free to believe that if you want.






    Neither of us can prove anything here. We're both doing speculation and trying to deduce what happened. I believe it stands to reason if the British knew, then Trump knew, as well.

    So we're back to he said/she said. Trump and his administration of handpicked lackeys has zero credibility with me, so I'm going to believe the anon leakers over any "official" word from the White House. We have to ask why Trump has never been hard on Putin? Here's a dictator who annexed a sovereign territory, was kicked out of the G8 because of it, and yet Trump is urging for Russia's return to the G8 and basically fellates Putin any chance he gets. Then, yeah, there's the issue of the troop withdrawal from Germany. Why? Trump, his admin, and the fanboys will claim it's because he's trying to reduce our military presence around the world and pressure our allies to pay more for their own defense, and I do agree with that, but why Germany first and not Italy, the UK, Japan? Oh:

    https://www.businessinsider.com/pull...sia-win-2020-6
    https://republicans-armedservices.ho...%20Germany.pdf



    I await some spin like this, and a claim of Trump is "doing the right thing!"



    "See, Trump is holding them accountable!"

    Then why no troop withdrawal from Italy, the UK, Japan (I know they're not in NATO), and such who are well below the 2 percent of GDP on defense as required by Dear Leader?

    *As of 2015. The UK has fallen below the mark now. https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/...617536/photo/1

    There's just too much cir stantial smoke here to not think there might be a fire raging underneath with regard to Trump and Russia. And my thoughts here is that when it comes down to he said/she said scenario, where neither side has definitive proof, the side with the most cir stantial evidence in its corner is likely to be right (of course we can't convict this way in a court-of-law). Boiled down. Trump was briefed. He didn't act because he's soft on Russia. Him being soft on Russia is illustrated by his general at ude toward Russia, his recent inviting them to the G7 (when every other member was against it), and his troop withdrawal from Germany first.

    And I also think this recent article illustrates the bounty threat was probably credible. Russia has been funding and equipping the Taliban for years.



    https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/07/01...es-bountygate/

    SMOKE

    Not an illogical leap to conclude they were also paying bounties.

    Same goes for any Democrat. If the Schiff story has legs (lol Federalist, though), investigate his ass, too.
    You say Trump and his administration have no zero credibility and then believe the NYT and its sources who completely the bed with their three+ years of Russiagate stories. That’s as funny as how you ignored everything you got wrong I pointed out. Will discuss more later and will leave you with this for now.


  10. #360
    Alleged Michigander ChumpDumper's Avatar
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    You say Trump and his administration have no zero credibility and then believe the NYT and its sources who completely the bed with their three+ years of Russiagate stories. That’s as funny as how you ignored everything you got wrong I pointed out. Will discuss more later and will leave you with this for now.

    Further confirmation it was in the written PDB.

  11. #361
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  12. #362
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    Russian bounties were the subject of police raids six months ago,

    as more details continue to emerge


    It’s now clear that the program has been in place for over a year, and that

    Trump was personally briefed on the threat by John Bolton in March of 2019.

    If that wasn’t enough, the program was also featured in subsequent daily briefs,

    including on February 27 when Trump had a tough schedule that included

    meeting with the actors behind the play FBI Lovebirds.

    the one fairly consistent claim from the White House has been that the information was “unconfirmed” and

    didn’t rise to the level of taking action.

    However, it’s obvious that this is untrue.

    The information was highly regarded enough to form the basis of
    changes to tactics on the ground in Afghanistan, and

    it has proven laughably easy to confirm the transfer of money
    between Russia and Taliban militants.

    Russia made these payments on multiple occasions and that

    a series of raids and arrests were made in chasing down the middlemen of the Russia scheme.

    And this wasn’t something that happened in the last week—it happened over six months ago.

    one of the raids that happened at the end of 2019 involved Rahmatullah Azizi,

    a man who started as a drug smuggler, then skimmed money as a U.S. contractor in Afghanistan,

    before becoming a conduit between Russia and the Taliban.

    Azizi was able to evade those raids—though he left behind half a million in cash—

    and is suspected to be in hiding. In Russia.

    there are briefings that go back over a year,

    detective work that put together the way money was making it

    from Russia to the Taliban, raids and arrests that happened six months ago, and

    tactical changes to Afghan operations made in the knowledge of Russian actions.

    https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/7/2/1957711/-Trump-s-attempt-to-play-off-Russian-bounties-as-a-hoax-are-crumbling-in-the-face-of-more-details?detail=emaildkre



  13. #363
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  14. #364
    SeaGOAT midnightpulp's Avatar
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    You say Trump and his administration have no zero credibility and then believe the NYT and its sources who completely the bed with their three+ years of Russiagate stories. That’s as funny as how you ignored everything you got wrong I pointed out. Will discuss more later and will leave you with this for now.

    What did I get wrong? Your counter is citing official word from Trump lackeys. Doesn't hold water with me. You might say, " dismissing info from people you don't like. Great counterargument." Same exact play from the Trump acolytes. They "deep state" everything and anything that is negative toward Dear Leader.

    Your video also isn't convincing because it is, once again, speculation. She is "speculating" he didn't get the brief because "it happens sometimes." So yes, he said/she said. I believe the NYT over the Trump administration. How many straight lies has that admin told so far? Now they are wantonly endangering American citizens by holding rallies and celebrations by not strictly enforcing social distancing and masks. I don't see how anyone, right or left, finds that acceptable. Freedumbs, right? So yes, I find this administration immoral. And immoral people lie through their in' teeth all the time.

    (And Mueller never exonerated Trump).

    This story is dead anyway. It won't convince the base. Even if the base had 100 percent confirmed evidence of it, it still wouldn't convince them to abandon their demi-god. Expect Trump's approval rating to be the exact same in two weeks. So meh.

  15. #365
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  16. #366
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  17. #367
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  18. #368
    wrong about pizzagate TSA's Avatar
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    What did I get wrong? Your counter is citing official word from Trump lackeys. Doesn't hold water with me. You might say, " dismissing info from people you don't like. Great counterargument." Same exact play from the Trump acolytes. They "deep state" everything and anything that is negative toward Dear Leader.

    Your video also isn't convincing because it is, once again, speculation. She is "speculating" he didn't get the brief because "it happens sometimes." So yes, he said/she said. I believe the NYT over the Trump administration. How many straight lies has that admin told so far? Now they are wantonly endangering American citizens by holding rallies and celebrations by not strictly enforcing social distancing and masks. I don't see how anyone, right or left, finds that acceptable. Freedumbs, right? So yes, I find this administration immoral. And immoral people lie through their in' teeth all the time.

    (And Mueller never exonerated Trump).

    This story is dead anyway. It won't convince the base. Even if the base had 100 percent confirmed evidence of it, it still wouldn't convince them to abandon their demi-god. Expect Trump's approval rating to be the exact same in two weeks. So meh.
    womp womp

    How the Pentagon failed to sell Afghan government’s bunk ‘Bountygate’ story to US intelligence agencies

    Another New York Times Russiagate bombs turns out to be a dud, as dodgy stories spun out by Afghan intelligence and exploited by the Pentagon ultimately failed to convince US intelligence agencies.

    The New York Times dropped another Russiagate bombs on June 26 with a sensational front-page story headlined, “Russia Secretly Offered Afghan Militants Bounties to Kill U.S. Troops, Intelligence Says.” A predictable media and political frenzy followed, reviving the anti-Russian hysteria that has excited the Beltway establishment for the past four years.

    But a closer look at the reporting by the Times and other mainstream outlets vying to confirm its coverage reveals another scandal not unlike Russiagate itself: the core elements of the story appear to have been fabricated by Afghan government intelligence to derail a potential US troop withdrawal from the country. And they were leaked to the Times and other outlets by US national security state officials who shared an agenda with their Afghan allies.

    In the days following the story’s publication, the maneuvers of the Afghan regime and US national security bureaucracy encountered an unexpected political obstacle: US intelligence agencies began offering a series of low confidence assessments in the Afghan government’s self-interested intelligence claims, judging them to be highly suspect at best, and altogether bogus at worst.

    In light of this dramatic development, the Times’ initial report appears to have been the product of a sensationalistic disinformation dump aimed at prolonging the failed Afghan war in the face of President Donald Trump’s plans to withdraw US troops from it.

    The Times quietly reveals its own sources’ falsehoods

    The Times not only broke the Bountygate story but commissioned squads of reporters comprising nine different correspondents to write eight articles hyping the supposed scandal in the course of eight days. Its coverage displayed the paper’s usual habit of regurgitating bits of dubious information furnished to its correspondents by faceless national security sources. In the days after the Times’ dramatic publication, its correspondent squads were forced to revise the story line to correct an account that ultimately turned out to be false on practically every important point.

    The Bountygate saga began on June 26, with a Times report declaring, “The United States concluded months ago” that the Russians “had covertly offered rewards for successful attacks last year.” The report suggested that US intelligence analysts had reached a firm conclusion on Russian bounties as early as January. A follow-up Times report portrayed the shocking discovery of the lurid Russian plot thanks to the recovery of a large amount of U.S. cash from a “raid on a Taliban outpost.” That article sourced its claim to the interrogations of “captured Afghan militants and criminals.”

    However, subsequent reporting revealed that the “US intelligence reports” about a Russian plot to distribute bounties through Afghan middlemen were not generated by US intelligence at all.

    The Times reported first on June 28, then again on June 30, that a large amount of cash found at a “Taliban outpost” or a “Taliban site” had led U.S. intelligence to suspect the Russian plot. But the Times had to walk that claim back, revealing on July 1 that the raid that turned up $500,000 in cash had in fact targeted the Kabul home of Rahmatullah Azizi, an Afghan businessmen said to have been involved in both drug trafficking and contracting for part of the billions of dollars the United States spent on construction projects.

    The Times also disclosed that the information provided by “captured militants and criminals” under “interrogation” had been the main source of su ion of a Russian bounty scheme in Afghanistan. But those “militants and criminals” turned out to be thirteen relatives and business associates of the businessman whose house was raided.

    The Times reported that those detainees were arrested and interrogated following the January 2020 raids based on su ions by Afghan intelligence that they belonged to a “ring of middlemen” operating between the Russian GRU and so-called “Taliban-linked militants,” as Afghan sources made clear.

    Furthermore, contrary to the initial report by the Times, those raids had actually been carried out exclusively by the Afghan intelligence service known as the National Directorate of Security (NDS). The Times disclosed this on July 1. Indeed, the interrogation of those detained in the raids was carried out by the NDS, which explains why the Times reporting referred repeatedly to “interrogations” without ever explaining who actually did the questioning.

    Given the notorious record of the NDS, it must be assumed that its interrogators used torture or at least the threat of it to obtain accounts from the detainees that would support the Afghan government’s narrative. Both the Toronto Globe and Mail and the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) have do ented as recently as 2019 the frequent use of torture by the NDS to obtain information from detainees. The primary objective of the NDS was to establish an air of plausibility around the claim that the fugitive businessman Azizi was the main “middleman” for a purported GRU scheme to offer bounties for killing Americans.

    NDS clearly fashioned its story to suit the sensibilities of the U.S. national security state. The narrative echoed previous intelligence reports about Russian bounties in Afghanistan that circulated in early 2019, and which were even discussed at NSC meetings. Nothing was done about these reports, however, because nothing had been confirmed.

    The idea that hardcore Taliban fighters needed or wanted foreign money to kill American invaders could have been dismissed on its face. So Afghan officials spun out claims that Russian bounties were paid to incentivize violence by “militants and criminals” supposedly “linked” to the Taliban.

    These elements zeroed in on the April 2019 IED attack on a vehicle near the U.S. military base at Bagram in Parwan province that killed three US Marines, insisting that the Taliban had paid local criminal networks in the region to carry out attacks.

    As former Parwan police chief Gen. Zaman Mamozai told the Times, Taliban commanders were based in only two of the province’s ten districts, forcing them to depend on a wider network of non-Taliban killers-for-hire to carry out attacks elsewhere in the province. These areas included the region around Bagram, according to the Afghan government’s argument.

    But Dr. Thomas H. Johnson of the Naval Postgraduate School, a leading expert on insurgency and counter-insurgency in Afghanistan who has been researching war in the country for three decades, dismissed the idea that the Taliban would need a criminal network to operate effectively in Parwan.

    “The Taliban are all over Parwan,” Johnson stated in an interview with The Grayzone, observing that its fighters had repeatedly carried out attacks on or near the Bagram base throughout the war.

    With withdrawal looming, the national security state plays its Bountygate card

    Senior U.S. national security officials had clear ulterior motives for embracing the dubious NDS narrative. More than anything, those officials were determined to scuttle Trump’s push for a complete withdrawal from Afghanistan. For Pentagon brass and civilian leadership, the fear of withdrawal became more acute in early 2020 as Trump began to demand an even more rapid timetable for a complete pullout than the 12-14 months being negotiated with the Taliban.

    It was little surprise then that this element leapt at the opportunity to exploit the self-interested claims by the Afghan NDS to serve its own agenda, especially as the November election loomed. The Times even cited one “senior [US] official” musing that “the evidence about Russia could have threatened that [Afghanistan] deal, because it suggested that after eighteen year of war, Mr. Trump was letting Russia chase the last American troops out of the country.”

    In fact, the intelligence reporting from the CIA Station in Kabul on the NDS Russia bounty claims was included in the Presidential Daily Brief (PDB) on or about February 27 — just as the negotiation of the U.S. peace agreement with the Taliban was about to be signed. That was too late to prevent the signing but timed well enough to ratchet up pressure on Trump to back away from his threat to pull all US troops out of Afghanistan.

    Trump may have been briefed orally on the issue at the time, but even if he had not been, the presence of a summary description of the intelligence in the PDB could obviously have been used to embarrass him on Afghanistan by leaking it to the media.

    According to Ray McGovern, a former CIA official who was responsible for preparing the PDB for Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, the insertion of raw, unconfirmed intelligence from a self-interested Afghan intelligence agency into the PDB was a departure from normal practice.

    Unless it was a two or three-sentence summary of a current intelligence report, McGovern explained, an item in the PDB normally involved only important intelligence that had been confirmed. Furthermore, according to McGovern, PDB items are normally shorter versions of items prepared the same day as part of the CIA’s “World Intelligence Review” or “WIRe.”

    Information about the purported Russian bounty scheme, however, was not part of the WIRe until May 4, well over two months later, according to the Times. That discrepancy added weight to the suggestion that the CIA had political motivations for planting the raw NDS reporting in the PDB before it could be evaluated.

    This June, Trump’s National Security Council (NSC) convened a meeting to discuss the intelligence report, officials told the Times. NSC members drew up a range of options in response to the alleged Russian plot, from a diplomatic protest to more forceful responses. Any public indication that US troops in Afghanistan had been targeted by Russian spies would have inevitably threatened Trump’s plan for withdrawal from Afghanistan.

    At some point in the weeks that followed, the CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency each undertook evaluations of the Afghan intelligence claims. Once the Times began publishing stories about the issue, Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe directed the National Intelligence Council, which is responsible for managing all common intelligence community assessments, to write a memorandum summarizing the intelligence organizations’ conclusions.

    The memorandum revealed that the intelligence agencies were not impressed with what they’d seen. The CIA and National Counter-Terrorism Center (NCTC) each gave the NDS intelligence an assessment of “moderate confidence,” according to memorandum.

    An official guide to intelligence community terminology used by policymakers to determine how much they should rely on assessments indicates that “moderate confidence” generally indicates that “the information being used in the analysis may be interpreted in various ways….” It was hardly a ringing endorsement of the NDS intelligence when the CIA and NCTC arrived at this finding.

    The assessment by the National Security Agency was even more important, given that it had obtained intercepts of electronic data on financial transfers “from a bank account controlled by Russia’s military intelligence agency to a Taliban-linked account,” according to the Times’ sources. But the NSA evidently had no idea what the transfers related to, and essentially disavowed the information from the Afghan intelligence agency.

    The NIC memorandum reported that NSA gave the information from Afghan intelligence “low confidence” — the lowest of the three possible levels of confidence used in the intelligence community. According to the official guide to intelligence community terminology, that meant that “information used in the analysis is scant, questionable, fragmented, or that solid analytical conclusions cannot be inferred from the information.”

    Other intelligence agencies reportedly assigned “low confidence” to the information as well, according to the memorandum. Even the Defense Intelligence Agency, known for its tendency to issue alarmist warnings about activities by US adversaries, found no evidence in the material linking the Kremlin to any bounty offers.

    Less than two weeks after the Times rolled out its supposed bombs on Russian bounties, relying entirely on national security officials pushing their own bureaucratic interests on Afghanistan, the story was effectively discredited by the intelligence community itself. In a healthy political climate, this would have produced a major setback for the elements determined to keep US troops entrenched in Afghanistan.

    But the political hysteria generated by the Times and the hyper-partisan elements triggered by the appearance of another sordid Trump-Putin connection easily overwhelmed the countervailing facts. It was all the Pentagon and its bureaucratic allies needed to push back on plans for a speedy withdrawal from a long and costly war.

    https://thegrayzone.com/2020/07/07/p...ence-agencies/

  19. #369
    I am that guy RandomGuy's Avatar
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    Which people are you saying know for a fact that Russia was paying bounties? Be specific. Schiff obviously wasn’t concerned.
    I am not saying for a fact that anyone knows. Another strawman lie.

  20. #370
    I am that guy RandomGuy's Avatar
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    [Crickets]

    Yeah, that's what I thought, you cowardly turd. Run the way the way you always do when your side steps in dog .
    You have assumed, incorrectly, that I actually saw your question. Haven't been following this much yet, as it develops.

    Seems obvious at this point that is is true, because the Trump administration is going hard after the leakers.

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    Trump has known Russia was funding the Taliban since 2017, and he never once pushed back



    Pentagon officials became aware of Russian efforts to fund the Taliban two years earlier, in 2017.

    This transfer of funds

    helped not just to fund attacks on individual U.S. troops,

    but to disrupt attempts to secure a lasting peace agreement.

    Through it all, Trump took no action.

    Actually, that’s not true—

    through it all, Trump insisted that the Pentagon share information with the people who were behind the murder of U.S. troops.

    And that action gave Putin and the Kremlin a

    very good picture of Trump: A weak man who was in their pocket.

    https://www.dailykos.com/stories/202...ce-pushed-back

  22. #372
    wrong about pizzagate TSA's Avatar
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    So Russia really did offer bounties on US troops? and paid them?
    Is there a single Russia story you haven't fallen for?


  23. #373
    LMAO koriwhat's Avatar
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    Russia, Russia, Russia!!!

  24. #374
    I am that guy RandomGuy's Avatar
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    Is there a single Russia story you haven't fallen for?

    smh

    More then enough for me to reach that conclusion at this point. More likely than not.

    This kind of thing seems to be above your ability to grasp nuance, so not really going to bother with it.

    Funny that you think some tweet that you agree with is somehow more valid than actual intel work that goes into such assessments.

  25. #375
    wrong about pizzagate TSA's Avatar
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    smh

    More then enough for me to reach that conclusion at this point. More likely than not.

    This kind of thing seems to be above your ability to grasp nuance, so not really going to bother with it.

    Funny that you think some tweet that you agree with is somehow more valid than actual intel work that goes into such assessments.
    Funny that the actual intel work that goes into such assessments says you fell for another Russia story again

    WASHINGTON — 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.

    U.S. intelligence agencies have for years do ented Russian financial and military support to the Taliban, but a Russian program to incentivize the killing of American service members would represent a significant escalation.

    Trump said he did not raise the issue of Russian payments to the Taliban in his most recent meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Critics have said he should have. Senior military officials say they don't believe the intelligence is strong enough to act on.

    Echoing comments in July by Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, McKenzie said that if he could establish that the Russians were offering payments to kill Americans, he would push to forcefully respond. But the intelligence is far from conclusive, he said.

    "I found what they presented to me very concerning, very worrisome. I just couldn't see the final connection, so I sent my guys back and said, look, keep digging. So we have continued to dig and look because this involves potential threats to U.S. forces, it's open," he said, adding, "I just haven't seen anything that closes that gap yet."

    A U.S. military official familiar with the intelligence added that after a review of the intelligence around each attack against Americans going back several years, none have been tied to any Russian incentive payments.

    https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/nat...-paid-n1240020

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