Russia paid Taliban bounties for American troops in Afghanistan

[Tsing Tao]

Hey, why is it that we were told in the past to trust all the intel agencies when they said something (because they spoke up against Trump) but now when they confirm Trump was not informed or briefed on any of this, we need to ignore that?

 

[WeToddDid2]

https://www.wsj.com/articles/russia...k-americans-u-s-intelligence-says-11593214584

Russian Spy Unit Paid Taliban to Attack Americans, U.S. Intelligence Says
Bounties paid by GRU are disclosed as U.S. plans troops drawdown, Taliban peace plan

WASHINGTON—A Russian spy unit paid members of Afghanistan’s Taliban movement to conduct lethal attacks on U.S. troops in that country, according to a classified American intelligence assessment, people familiar with the report said.

The assessment of the role played by Russia’s military intelligence agency, the GRU, in fostering attacks on American soldiers, comes as President Trump is pushing the Pentagon to withdraw a significant portion of U.S. forces from Afghanistan and as U.S. diplomats try to forge a peace accord involving...

Do you think that Trump should send Russia a down payment of $400 million cash and promise Russia a total of $1.7 billion? Where was your outrage then? If I remember correctly, you have made numerous arguments that Obama did the right thing by sending the Iran money.


Report: Iran pays $1,000 for each U.S. soldier killed by the Taliban
Afghan group's treasurer admits receiving money from Iran, newspaper says


U.S. Payment of $1.7 Billion to Iran Raises Questions of Ransom

 

[Cuddles]

Do you think that Trump should send Russia a down payment of $400 million cash and promise Russia a total of $1.7 billion? Where was your outrage then? If I remember correctly, you have made numerous arguments that Obama did the right thing by sending the Iran money.


Report: Iran pays $1,000 for each U.S. soldier killed by the Taliban
Afghan group's treasurer admits receiving money from Iran, newspaper says


U.S. Payment of $1.7 Billion to Iran Raises Questions of Ransom

Hey guise, let's cut trade with Germany & Japan, they killed some of our troops in WWII. The point isn't to be against diplomacy numb nuts, it's to not kowtow to our enemies as it's happening & then sweep it under the rug w/o acknowledgement.

 

[Arnie]

Hey, why is it that we were told in the past to trust all the intel agencies when they said something (because they spoke up against Trump) but now when they confirm Trump was not informed or briefed on any of this, we need to ignore that?

Maybe he wasn't briefed on it, but he sure as hell knows about it now. If this is true he's toast (well, actually I think he's toast anyway). I can only imagine how I would feel if one of those killed for a bounty was my son.

 

[Tsing Tao]

Maybe he wasn't briefed on it, but he sure as hell knows about it now. If this is true he's toast (well, actually I think he's toast anyway). I can only imagine how I would feel if one of those killed for a bounty was my son.

If it is true, he should be toast. You would argue that he should have been briefed. You can drag all the intel chiefs in front of congress and get rid of them, too, for not briefing the President.

Maybe this won't happen because the intel isn't true at all, and the President wasn't briefed because it wasn't a credible threat. There are probably many things the President isn't briefed on daily because the threat isn't credible, but chatter in the intel community.

Given how utterly wrong the press AND the intel community have been in the past, I think its probably a good idea to really determine what the truth is here.

 

[WeToddDid2]

it's to not kowtow to our enemies as it's happening & then sweep it under the rug w/o acknowledgement.

Uhhh....What!?

So, you are saying Obama shouldn't have paid the Iranian ransom. Or, since a dem president kowtowed and swept everything Iran had done under the rug, you consider that diplomacy?

The egregious bias that libtards perpetually demonstrate is absolutely grotesque.

U.S. Payment of $1.7 Billion to Iran Raises Questions of Ransom

 

[Cuddles]

Uhhh....What!?

So, you are saying Obama shouldn't have paid the Iranian ransom. Or, since a dem president kowtowed and swept everything Iran had done under the rug, you consider that diplomacy?

The egregious bias that libtards perpetually demonstrate is absolutely grotesque.

U.S. Payment of $1.7 Billion to Iran Raises Questions of Ransom

in MAGAtard world refund=ransom

 

[Cuddles]

White House officials declined to comment on the latest revelations!!!

Intercepted bank transfers show Russia poured money into Taliban-linked accounts after bounties revealed

American officials intercepted data that supported their conclusion that Russia had secretly offered bounties to Taliban forces for killing U.S. and coalition forces.

Three officials familiar with the intelligence told the New York Times that intercepted electronic data showed large financial transfers from a bank account controlled by Russia’s military intelligence agency to an account linked to the Taliban.

That evidence supported claims about the bounty program described by detainees during interrogations, and undercut White House denials that the intelligence was too thinly sourced to present to President Donald Trump in his daily briefing.

Investigators also identified numerous Afghans by name who were linked to the suspected Russia operation, officials told the Times, including a man believed to have helped distribute some of the funds and purportedly since fled to Russia.

The White House and national security council declined to comment on the new revelations, as did director of national intelligence John Ratcliffe, who is expected to meet privately Wednesday with the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee.

 

[DTB2]

Why would anyone need to pay these people to kill Americans? It is their goal when they wake up in the morning, no financial incentive is needed.

That's how stupid this entire concept is yet people fall for it.

 

[userque]

The fact that a dumbass, unread, criminal clown con-man can be elected the the highest office in the world; and a political party supported said buffoonery for four years; pretty much tells me: we have just witnessed a key reversal bar.

The average age of an empire? A mere 250 years
https://www.times-standard.com/2017/06/28/the-average-age-of-an-empire-a-mere-250-years/#:~:text=The average age of empires,its 250th year in 2026.

By THE TIMES-STANDARD |
PUBLISHED: June 28, 2017 at 2:23 a.m. | UPDATED: July 30, 2018 at 6:26 a.m.
By Georgie Anne Geyer

WASHINGTON >> As the Fourth of July approaches, the idea that democracy is the highest political calling of mankind once again hangs poignantly in the philosophical air.

We fret over problems here at home. We shake our heads over warring political parties, our vulgarized public culture and a billionaire class that thinks it should inherit the country all by its rich little 1 percent self.

But when we look at America’s foreign policy since World War II we should be most soberly gripped by a contradiction in thinking that could be leading us disastrously into the last hours of empire.

I am talking about the obsession among many of our foreign policy elites with spreading democracy across the world — and doing it more and more at the tip of a sword, with the shot of a rifle and the horrific destruction of a bomb.

This is no longer the Wilsonian ideal of “making the world safe for democracy” that sprang out of the bloody trenches of World War I. This is something new, a mind-set that sounds noble but is so deadly in practice that, contrary to what Americans are being led to believe, it is not only causing the massacre of foreigners but slowly and surely destroying democracy within America itself.

It’s time we finally face the facts squarely:

1. Many peoples do not have the historical foundations that make our form of democracy possible, and that does not make them inferior, or superior, but only different.

2. In insisting that they adopt our system, we are cementing ourselves in senseless and destructive wars that we will never “win” in any conventional terms.

The stages of our unwinnable “new wars,” which now stretch from Iraq and Afghanistan to Somalia, Yemen and Libya and are bleeding the American state for little apparent reason, are these:

First, you go into a country with troops — easy. Then, when you aren’t doing well, you try again, because you just didn’t try hard enough. Next you insist you WILL win — now, everybody’s getting mad. Then you try to force the others to submit, and you start using un-American methods like “enforced interrogation,” which of course doesn’t work either.

Finally, you reach today’s Afghanistan situation. Secretary of Defense James Mattis said recently, “We are not winning in Afghanistan.” And a second American general told CNN that, even though we’re losing there, we can’t withdraw because it would look bad. Great!

We have 800-plus military bases around the world and Special Operations units (American Gurkhas?) in 130 nations. “We are supporting the democratic aspirations of all people,” says former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in her new book, “Democracy: Stories From the Long Road to Freedom.”

President Trump has given the Pentagon total power to make decisions in the “new wars,” and it wants an additional $34 billion to spend because the wars are clearly not working as planned.

Well, it seems that at least one country has been thinking more practically. That country is China. It is building roads and railroads and trade from Africa to Latin America to the Middle East, while we fight for ideas that will never take root where they are not wanted.

All I’m suggesting this Fourth, which is a day I dearly love and honor, is that we start thinking about what we are doing and where we are trying to go in a world that craves us as an example, not an emperor.

Americans may not think of themselves as an “empire,” but much of the world does. The average age of empires, according to a specialist on the subject, the late Sir John Bagot Glubb, is 250 years. After that, empires always die, often slowly but overwhelmingly from overreaching in the search for power.

The America of 1776 will reach its 250th year in 2026. Happy Fourth!

Georgie Anne Geyer has been a foreign correspondent and commentator on international affairs for more than 40 years. She can be reached at gigi_geyer@juno.com.