This, from modesttraveller
Russian bounties to Taliban-linked militants resulted in deaths of U.S. troops, according to intelligence assessments
Russian bounties offered to Taliban-linked militants to kill coalition forces in Afghanistan are believed to have resulted in the deaths of several U.S. service members, according to intelligence gleaned from U.S. military interrogations of captured militants in recent months.
Several people familiar with the matter said it was unclear exactly how many Americans or coalition troops from other countries may have been killed or targeted under the program. U.S. forces in Afghanistan suffered a total of 10 deaths from hostile gunfire or improvised bombs in 2018, and 16 in 2019. Two have been killed this year. In each of those years, several service members were also killed by what are known as “green on blue” hostile incidents by members of Afghan security forces, which are sometimes believed to have been infiltrated by the Taliban.
It looks as if Lindsey Graham golfed with Trump this weekend. To get their stories straight?
“Intel just reported to me that they did not find this info credible, and therefore did not report it to me or @VP,” Trump tweeted in response to Sen. Lindsey Graham calling on Congress to investigate the reports.
“Possibly another fabricated Russia Hoax, maybe by the Fake News @nytimesbooks, wanting to make Republicans look bad!!!” the President continued.
By “Intel” does he mean his new, hand-picked, cover-up DNI?? And it took him 48 hours to come up with this bullshit??!?!?
We have to get the REAL intel personnel up before Congress. NOW. Trump is LYING.
Trump calls it “Fake News” by the (still failing) NYTimes.
But the story has been confirmed by AT LEAST CNN, WSJ and WaPo.
It took a former CIA analyst and intelligence briefer to come right to the goddamned point:
David Priess, a former CIA analyst and intelligence briefer, described several scenarios under which Trump and those about them could have been made aware of the assessment. The striking part, he said in a Twitter posting, was that the White House had not addressed the substance of the report, nor publicly expressed determination to get to the bottom of it.
“Why hasn’t the commander in chief responded to such a grave development?” he asked.
Instead of going golfing. Which is what he did.
Donald Trump — Missing Inaction
Now, this update from NYTimes:
Spies and Commandos Warned Months Ago of Russian Bounties on U.S. Troops
The recovery of large amounts of American cash at a Taliban outpost in Afghanistan tipped off U.S. officials.
WASHINGTON — United States intelligence officers and Special Operations forces in Afghanistan alerted their superiors as early as January to a suspected Russian plot to pay bounties to the Taliban to kill American troops in Afghanistan, according to officials briefed on the matter.
The crucial information that led the spies and commandos to focus on the bounties included the recovery of a large amount of American cash from a raid on a Taliban outpost that prompted suspicions. Interrogations of captured militants and criminals played a central role in making the intelligence community confident in its assessment that the Russians had offered and paid bounties in 2019, another official has said.
Armed with this information, military and intelligence officials have been reviewing American and other coalition combat casualties since early last year to determine whether any were victims of the plot. Four Americans were killed in combat in early 2020, but the Taliban have not attacked American positions since a February agreement to end the long-running war in Afghanistan.
Only a very few GOPers had something to say about this grave development:
Republican Rep. Michael McCaul (Texas), the ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a statement Saturday that he “immediately reached out to the Administration” to confirm the allegations.
“If accurate, the Administration must take swift and serious action to hold the Putin regime accountable,” McCaul said.
And Bolton said something, but who the f*ck cares?
More importantly,
Not a damn word from Mitch McConnell (who can actually so something about sanctions on Russia)
Not a damn word from Ranking member Chairman of Senate Armed Services Committee James Inhofe
Not a damn word from these other members of the Senate Armed Services Committee:
Joni Ernst
Martha McSally
Thom Tillis
Tom Cotton
etc. etc. etc………………..
Ms. McEnany did not challenge The Times’s reporting on the existence of the intelligence assessment, the National Security Council meeting and the White House’s inaction.
On CNN, Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee, said that the reported Russian actions “would be consistent with the Russian practice over the last few years of doing its best secretly to try to undermine Western government, including the United States.”
[...]
One official said that the seizure of a large amount of American cash at one Taliban site got “everybody’s attention” in Afghanistan. It was not clear when the money was recovered.
[...]
Within the last several months, the assessment was compiled and sent up the chain of command to senior military and intelligence officials, eventually landing at the highest levels of the White House. The Security Council meeting in March came at a delicate time, as the coronavirus pandemic was becoming a crisis and prompting shutdowns around the country.
A former American official said that the intelligence analyst who briefs the president and the national security adviser, Robert C. O’Brien, working with his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, would have been involved in any decision to brief Mr. Trump on Russia’s activities. The director of the C.I.A., Gina Haspel, might have also weighed in, the former official said.
Sunday, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who helped run Trump’s 2016 campaign, said on ABC’s “This Week” that “he will lose” his reelection bid “if he doesn’t change course, both in terms of the substance of what he is discussing and the way that he approaches the American people.”
Meanwhile in Sanity Land (just to the west of Fealtyville)
Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., and an Army combat veteran, said she will demand a Senate hearing to look into the report. She also slammed Trump for supporting Russia's bid to reenter the G-7, an organization of leaders of the world's most industrialized nations.
And Trump is trying to divert attention, by praising racism on Twitter
And subtly claiming that the intelligence ITSELF is faulty:
Trump, who spent Sunday at his Virginia golf property, referred in a pair of tweets to the “so-called attacks on our troops,” attacked the report as “Fake News” and wrote that “nobody briefed me or told me.”
“Nobody’s been tougher on Russia than the Trump Administration.”
Except for………..…...…...everybody else.
Joe Biden has accused Donald Trump of betraying his duty as president, after a report claimed the White House knew for months Russian intelligence offered Afghan militants bounties to kill U.S. soldiers but did not punish Moscow.
“His entire presidency has been a gift to Putin, but this is beyond the pale. It’s betrayal of the most sacred duty we bear as a nation to protect and equip our troops when we send them into harm’s way. It’s a betrayal of every single American family with a loved one serving in Afghanistan or anywhere overseas.”
“President Trump, the commander in chief of American troops serving in a dangerous theater of war, has known about this for months according to the Times and done worse than nothing,” Biden said.
“Not only has he failed to sanction or impose any kind of consequences on Russia for this egregious violation of international law, Donald Trump has continued his embarrassing campaign of deference and debasing himself before Vladimir Putin,” Biden continued. “He has had this information according to the Times and yet he offered to host Putin in the United States and sought to invite Russia to rejoin the G7.”
Right.
The.
F*ck.
On!!!!!!!!!!!
So far, only Trump himself has even bent toward the idea that the intelligence was faulty.
So, what ARE you going to DO about it, now that you DO know, *sshole?
Sunday, Jun 28, 2020 · 9:39:49 PM +00:00 · AlyoshaKaramazov
Meanwhile, across the pond………….
Sir Andrew Wood, Britain’s ambassador to Russia from 1995 to 2000, said the allegations were “perfectly plausible”, adding: “I don’t think it’s the sort of thing made up for propaganda purposes. Of course, the Russians would deny it if Vladimir Putin had been photographed shooting someone in the head.”
Trump hopes that a peace deal with the Taliban will end the Afghanistan war and give a major fillip to his re-election campaign. But the president’s refusal to confront Putin has prompted concern in diplomatic circles.
“Trump is helping Putin as much as he is able to help him and not releasing information about Americans being killed by Taliban with financial support from the Russian state goes with this general policy,” Felshtinsky said.
There is a suspicion that Boris Johnson and his predecessor, Theresa May, have been reluctant to publish an Intelligence and Security Committee report on Russia, finished last October, for fear of upsetting Trump.
In a statement on Monday, the Afghan National Security Council called the past week the deadliest in 19 years of war in the country. Four hundred, twenty-two attacks were carried out by the Taliban during the week, killing 291 members of security forces and wounding 550 others, an additional 148 civilians were also killed in the violence.