Turns out, the "Russian Bounty" thing probably didn't happen

[CayceG]

U.S. Intel Walks Back Claim Russians Put Bounties on American Troops

WWW.THEDAILYBEAST.COM

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It was a huge election-time story that prompted cries of treason. But according to a newly disclosed assessment, Donald Trump might have been right to call it a “hoax.”

 

 

Quote

It was a blockbuster story about Russia’s return to the imperial “Great Game” in Afghanistan. The Kremlin had spread money around the longtime central Asian battlefield for militants to kill remaining U.S. forces. It sparked a massive outcry from Democrats and their #resistance amplifiers about the treasonous Russian puppet in the White House whose admiration for Vladimir Putin had endangered American troops.

 

But on Thursday, the Biden administration announced that U.S. intelligence only had “low to moderate” confidence in the story after all. Translated from the jargon of spyworld, that means the intelligence agencies have found the story is, at best, unproven—and possibly untrue.

 

“The United States intelligence community assesses with low to moderate confidence that Russian intelligence officers sought to encourage Taliban attacks U.S. and coalition personnel in Afghanistan in 2019 and perhaps earlier,” a senior administration official said.

 

 

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According to the officials on Thursday’s call, the reporting about the alleged “bounties” came from “detainee reporting” – raising the specter that someone told their U.S.-aligned Afghan jailers what they thought was necessary to get out of a cage. Specifically, the official cited “information and evidence of connections to criminal agents in Afghanistan and elements of the Russian government” as sources for the intelligence community’s assessment.

 

Without additional corroboration, such reporting is notoriously unreliable.

 

 

 

Whoops!

[SuperSpreader]

10 minutes ago, CayceG said:

U.S. Intel Walks Back Claim Russians Put Bounties on American Troops

WWW.THEDAILYBEAST.COM

---

It was a huge election-time story that prompted cries of treason. But according to a newly disclosed assessment, Donald Trump might have been right to call it a “hoax.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Whoops!

 

Best intelligence. Best military. Best bombs. Never makes mistakes. 

[CayceG]

9 minutes ago, SuperSpreader said:

 

Best intelligence. Best military. Best bombs. Never makes mistakes. 

 

In this case, I think it was a press leak that got Democrats really fired up to win political points. The intel community routinely rates information on how believable or likely it is. People use it for their own political purposes, devoid of the consideration of how true it might be.

[Amazatron]

Well this is going to go well...

[MarSolo]

Trump: “redo the election!”

[SuperSpreader]

18 minutes ago, MarSolo said:

Trump: “redo the election!”

hahaha RECALL BIDEN

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

On 4/15/2021 at 10:38 AM, CayceG said:

Donald Trump might have been right to call it a “hoax.”

and if he didn’t lie about everything, big or small, we might have been willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Fuck him and his butt hurt, snow flake Stans. 

[Guest]

7 minutes ago, Spawn_of_Apathy said:

and if he didn’t lie about everything, big or small, we might have been willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Fuck him and his butt hurt, snow flake Stans. 

There was contemporaneous reporting calling into question the veracity of the bounty story, but the story fit the narrative people wanted to believe so they ignored the red flags. This happened often during the Trump administration.

[stepee]

Let’s be real, the only reason Trump said it was a hoax is because he thought it was real.

[Anathema-]

If trump didn't want to have trouble with sketchy rumors that made him look bad because it made it look like he was beholden to Russia maybe he shouldn't have put himself in that position. 

[MarSolo]

To be fair, didn't this story leak at the same time it was reported Trump called soldiers “suckers” and asked John Kelly AT HIS OWN SON’S GRAVE “I don’t get it? What’s in it for them?” Which, Kelly never denied happening.

 

And surprisingly, more people were upset this story got more attention than the Russian bounty stuff?

[Jason]

On 4/16/2021 at 11:57 AM, stepee said:

Let’s be real, the only reason Trump said it was a hoax is because he thought it was real.

 

Also it helped the believability of the story that Trump literally only ever bothered to deny things that (he thought) were true. A Trump denial of a story was the confirmation basically every time.