Author: Daniel Lazare Via Strategic Culture Foundation
The views of the Authors are not necessarily the views of Enigmose.
In case you’ve been living in a cave the last few weeks, here’s latest news scoop riling the United States: Russia has been paying the Afghan Taliban bounties for American scalps.
How do we know? Because the New York Times tells us so.
and the Times is not the kind of paper to make stuff up. But how does the Times know it’s true? Because sources say so, sources so super-sensitive and high up that it can’t reveal their names. All it can say according to in a front-page exposé that ran on June 26 is that they consist of “officials briefed on the matter” and “officials [who] spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the delicate intelligence and internal deliberations.”
What could be more convincing? But the Times has since added more details from more sources, all anonymous of course. On June 27, it reported that the tip was so solid that it made its way into the morning intelligence wrap-up known as “president’s daily brief,” even though President Trump says he never heard a word. On June 28, it said that two “officials briefed on the matter … believed at least one U.S. troop death was the result of the bounties” and that another unnamed official said that “[i]nterrogations 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.”
So it turns out officials they have evidence after all even though we still have no idea what it is. Finally, the Times reported on June 30 that suspicions were aroused when “American officials intercepted electronic data showing large financial transfers from a bank account controlled by Russia’s military intelligence agency to a Taliban-linked account.” Then came the usual disclaimer:
“The three American officials who described and confirmed details about the basis for the intelligence assessment spoke on the condition of anonymity amid swelling turmoil over the Trump administration’s failure to authorize any response to Russia’s suspected proxy targeting of American troops and playing down of the issue after it came to light four days ago.”
It’s all true even though the Times can’t say who its sources are because … because … well, just because it can’t.
Still, the Times wants us to believe since the effect is to discredit two of its top bêtes noires, Trump and Vladimir Putin. (It would score an all-too-perfect trifecta if it could somehow rope Bashar al-Assad into the bargain, but that’s probably asking too much.) In any case, why not play along all that turmoil can continue to swell?
But we can’t for one simple reason: the chances of the story being true, conservatively speaking, are somewhere between zero and one percent. Why? Let’s start with the most obvious. An assertion by some spook or other is not the same thing as evidence, as the redoubtable Caitlin Johnstone has pointed out. Rather, it’s an opinion that neutral bystanders are free to accept or reject. An assertion by an anonymous spook, moreover, is even more unimpressive. Meanwhile, not only has U.S. intelligence compiled a record of accuracy over the last two decades that couldn’t be more dismal, but Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who ran the CIA for fifteen months in 2017-18, actually bragged about the agency’s skill in misleading the public. As he put it, “We lied, we cheated, we stole … we had entire training courses.” So after lying about everything from weapons of mass destruction in Iraq to “golden showers” in the Moscow Ritz Carlton, why should we believe the “intelligence community” now when it says it’s telling the truth?
All Cretans are liars, saith Epimenides the Cretan – which is a fancy way saying we shouldn’t, not unless we want to be led by the nose into another disastrous war, that is.
But the report doesn’t even make sense. Not only have the Taliban been at war with the United States since 2001, they’re winning. So why should Russia pay them to do what they’ve been happily doing on their own for close to two decades? Contrary to what the Times wants us to believe, there’s no evidence that Russia backs the Taliban or wants the U.S. to leave with its tail between its legs. Quite the opposite as a quick glance at a map will attest. Given that Afghanistan abuts the former Soviet republics of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan and is less than a thousand miles from Chechnya, where Russia fought a brutal war against Sunni Islamist separatists in 1999-2000, the last thing it wants is a Muslim fundamentalist republic in the heart of Central Asia. Read More
NY Times Progressive Agenda
Is The New York Times a media outlet or an activist organization?
The NYT tackles all issues from a progressive point of view, and I do mean tackles - pummels would be more apropos. Pew Research Centers’ media polarization reports the audience for the NY Times as “consistently liberal.” The New York Times has not endorsed a non Democratic Presidential Candidate since 1960, and without hesitation spins all narratives with a liberal-progressive agenda in mind.
"Is The New York Times a media outlet or an activist organization? It appears that it’s leaning toward activism. A recent town hall meeting of Executive Editor Dean Baquet and Times staffers revealed a publication struggling to maintain any meaningful independence from its aggressively left-wing readership and staff ...Read More