So About This Russian Bounty Thing
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Well, well, well....
Reports that a Russian military intelligence unit offered bounties on coalition soldiers in Afghanistan are based partially on old information that surfaced more than a decade ago, international intelligence sources said. The sources include both Western-based analysts and front line personnel on the ground in South Asia.
Many of the sources spoke to Just the News via encrypted communications, and insisted that their names not be revealed because their lives are at risk.
“The only thing new about this story is the date on the headline,” one South Asian contact said. “This is old information, going back to Obama days and before. Everyone who has been involved in Afghanistan heard this a long time ago.”
Reports of an alleged deal between the Taliban and Russia’s military intelligence directorate, the GRU, leaked last week, leading to public outrage on many fronts. President Donald Trump has said the claims likely are fabricated, and Democrats in particular have accused Trump of siding with Moscow to deny the truth.
No one definitively has determined, though, what the truth is in this situation.
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Media Bias Fact Check rates Just the News thusly: "Overall, we rate Just the News moderately Right Biased based on story selection that mostly favors a conservative perspective. We also rate them High for factual reporting due to proper sourcing of information and a reasonable fact check record."
For more, go here: https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/just-the-news/
@Catseye3 said in So About This Russian Bounty Thing:
Media Bias Fact Check rates Just the News thusly: "Overall, we rate Just the News moderately Right Biased based on story selection that mostly favors a conservative perspective. We also rate them High for factual reporting due to proper sourcing of information and a reasonable fact check record."
For more, go here: https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/just-the-news/
Here's the front page of today's New York Times. Tell me there's no bias in their reporting of what they consider "The News."
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My comment from the Media Bias Check wasn't meant to be critical. Did you read it also said "High for factual reporting"?
@Catseye3 said in So About This Russian Bounty Thing:
My comment from the Media Bias Check wasn't meant to be critical. Did you read it also said "High for factual reporting"?
Of course I did. My point is that it mixes editorializing with "factual reporting." When words like "railing," "discordant,"and "divisive" appear in the so-called "news" section, on the front page, above the fold, it makes me wonder what other "factual reporting" The Times is doing.
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Cats, your post was about how Just The News seems to be pretty factual, while George's is about how the NYT is not. They are complementary.
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Remember this breathtaking news by NYT, where is it now???
No scorecard for track record I suppose.
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AFAIK, there is no hard intelligence this actually happened.
We've got bigger things to worry about.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/us-intel-walks-back-claim-russians-put-bounties-on-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."
“This information puts a burden on the Russian government to explain its actions and take steps to address this disturbing pattern of behavior,” the official said, indicating that Biden is unprepared to walk the story back fully.
Significantly, the Biden team announced a raft of sanctions on Thursday. But those sanctions, targeting Russia’s sovereign debt market, are prompted only by Russia’s interference in the 2020 election and its alleged role in the SolarWinds cyber espionage. (In contrast, Biden administration officials said that their assessment attributing the breach of technology company SolarWinds to hackers from Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service was “high confidence.”)
Putting on a tinfoil hat here, isn't it just possible that this type of disinformation was used to, ahem, affect an election?
Nah...
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https://www.thedailybeast.com/us-intel-walks-back-claim-russians-put-bounties-on-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."
“This information puts a burden on the Russian government to explain its actions and take steps to address this disturbing pattern of behavior,” the official said, indicating that Biden is unprepared to walk the story back fully.
Significantly, the Biden team announced a raft of sanctions on Thursday. But those sanctions, targeting Russia’s sovereign debt market, are prompted only by Russia’s interference in the 2020 election and its alleged role in the SolarWinds cyber espionage. (In contrast, Biden administration officials said that their assessment attributing the breach of technology company SolarWinds to hackers from Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service was “high confidence.”)
Putting on a tinfoil hat here, isn't it just possible that this type of disinformation was used to, ahem, affect an election?
Nah...
@george-k said in So About This Russian Bounty Thing:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/us-intel-walks-back-claim-russians-put-bounties-on-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."
“This information puts a burden on the Russian government to explain its actions and take steps to address this disturbing pattern of behavior,” the official said, indicating that Biden is unprepared to walk the story back fully.
Significantly, the Biden team announced a raft of sanctions on Thursday. But those sanctions, targeting Russia’s sovereign debt market, are prompted only by Russia’s interference in the 2020 election and its alleged role in the SolarWinds cyber espionage. (In contrast, Biden administration officials said that their assessment attributing the breach of technology company SolarWinds to hackers from Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service was “high confidence.”)
Putting on a tinfoil hat here, isn't it just possible that this type of disinformation was used to, ahem, affect an election?
Nah...
Yup another bit of vomit from the people who call other people liars. You can’t make this up.
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BTW...Cats, what is your opinion on this story now?
“Cry havoc and let slip the DOGE of war!”
Those who cheered as J-6 American prisoners were locked in solitary for 18 months without trial, now suddenly fight tooth and nail for foreign terrorists’ "due process". — Buck Sexton
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The WaPo fact checker (LOLGF):
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/07/30/trumps-four-pinocchio-interview-russian-bounties/
onathan Swan, Axios: “It’s been widely reported that the U.S. has intelligence indicating that Russia paid bounties, or offered to pay bounties, to Taliban fighters to kill American soldiers. You had a phone call with Vladimir Putin on July 23rd. Did you bring up this issue?”
President Trump: “No, that was a phone call to discuss other things, and frankly, that’s an issue that many people said was fake news.”
— Exchange on “Axios on HBO,” July 29, 2020
Trump: “It never reached my desk. You know why? Because they didn’t think it — intelligence — they didn’t think it was real.”
Swan: “It was in your written brief, though.”
Trump: “They didn’t think, they didn’t think it was worthy. I wouldn’t mind. If it reached my desk, I would have done something about it. It never reached my desk because — ”
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Swan: “Do you read your written brief?”
Trump: “I do. I read it a lot. I read a lot. They like to say I don’t read. I read a lot. I comprehend extraordinarily well, probably better than anybody you’ve interviewed in a long time.”
— “Axios on HBO” interview
Trump rarely gets fact-checked on camera, but here we have a good example of an interviewer pressing and prodding on a sensitive topic.
The president has been dismissive of U.S. intelligence reports that Russia offered bounties to the Taliban to kill U.S. troops in Afghanistan. (A “hoax” or “fake news,” Trump says.)
Follow-up questions in a one-on-one setting can expose the strength or weakness of a claim. When asked about reports that he was briefed on the intelligence, and why he didn’t raise the bounties in a call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Trump started dissembling in response.
