JUST the Stolen Documents/Mar-A-Lago/"Judge" Cannon Trial

[jhu72]

It is always the same with Trump and his clown car. Tell a dozen different stories and blame a rank and file member of the bureaucracy for what you yourself did or didn't do. Another dog of Trump's that won't hunt.

Guardian article. If it is in the PDB, its meant to be read and understood!

[old salt]

Once again, you focus on the tactical details while completely missing the strategic importance of keeping troops in Germany.

The troops in Germany represent the United States’ commitment to NATO. Russia remains the greatest threat to Europe and the NATO alliance.

It is Russia that most recently invaded a sovereign European nation, Ukraine. It is Russia that illegally occupies the Crimea, a part of Ukraine.

Can we at least get you to admit that putting bounties on American soldiers is a bad thing and that Putin is a murderous thug?

Right. Our iroops in Germany represent more of a commitment to NATO than do our troops (& tanks) in Poland, Lithuianaia, Bulgaria & Romania.
We're providing significantly more lethal military aid & training to Ukraine than the rest of NATO combined.

Putin is a murderous thug. A very effective one who enjoys the support of the Russian people sufficient to guarantee his lifetime tenure, if he so desires. IF Putin actually did put bounties on US soldiers, that's a bad thing. That's one reason why (after 19 years) we need to get out of Afghanistan, so our troops won't be exposed to Russian proxies who may be carrying out reprisals for our proxies killing Russians in Syria & Ukraine.
Show us the proof that Russia's aid to the Taliban was solely for attacks on US forces rather than also to support their fight against the ASF & ISIS.

[old salt]

It is always the same with Trump and his clown car. Tell a dozen different stories and blame a rank and file member of the bureaucracy for what you yourself did or didn't do. Another dog of Trump's that won't hunt.

Guardian article. If it is in the PDB, its meant to be read and understood!

I wonder who was the CIA agent who was Trump's briefer.
Maybe that's what Azra Turk is doing now.
The Guardian would know.

[cradleandshoot]

Once again, you focus on the tactical details while completely missing the strategic importance of keeping troops in Germany.

The troops in Germany represent the United States’ commitment to NATO. Russia remains the greatest threat to Europe and the NATO alliance.

It is Russia that most recently invaded a sovereign European nation, Ukraine. It is Russia that illegally occupies the Crimea, a part of Ukraine.

Can we at least get you to admit that putting bounties on American soldiers is a bad thing and that Putin is a murderous thug?

Right. Our iroops in Germany represent more of a commitment to NATO than do our troops (& tanks) in Poland, Lithuianaia, Bulgaria & Romania.
We're providing significantly more lethal military aid & training to Ukraine than the rest of NATO combined.

Putin is a murderous thug. A very effective one who enjoys the support of the Russian people sufficient to guarantee his lifetime tenure, if he so desires. IF Putin actually did put bounties on US soldiers, that's a bad thing. That's one reason why (after 19 years) we need to get out of Afghanistan, so our troops won't be exposed to Russian proxies who may be carrying out reprisals for our proxies killing Russians in Syria & Ukraine.
Show us the proof that Russia's aid to the Taliban was solely for attacks on US forces rather than also to support their fight against the ASF & ISIS.

That is like trying to prove that all of those billions in cash flown into Iran was just to pay the Iranians what we owed them. Why wasn't Iran held responsible for all of the US service members maimed and killed by Iranian manufactured IEDs? Why was that money not confiscated to pay for the damage done to American service members by Iran? Oh yeah, I forget, that was a completely different issue cradle. Why didn't POTUS Obama tell the Iranians to go F**k themselves. He wanted wanted a deal. POTUS Obama sold his soul to the devil to get that deal. I wonder what POTUS Obama would say to that Marine who had both of his legs blown off from an Iranian supplied IED. F**k you Marine... we owed Iran all those billion. You got a problem with your medical disability... go to the VA. If the VA does not have the money to help you out... sorry I sent that money to Iran.

[old salt]

Cold War dispatch from the Deep State -- middle eastern front :
(Nasty Natasha contribuiting)

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/06/3 ... ump-345584

Russians squeeze U.S. troops in Syria amid uproar over Trump’s dealings with Moscow

The dispute over intelligence about bounty payments in Afghanistan is exposing a deep rift in the government over how to handle Russia.

The growing friction between U.S. and Russian troops in Syria comes against a backdrop of deepening mistrust between the national security community.
Russian forces are encroaching on U.S. troop-controlled territory in eastern Syria — part of what officials say is a deliberate campaign to squeeze the U.S. military out of the region, according to two current U.S. officials and one former U.S. official.
The growing friction between U.S. and Russian troops in Syria comes against a backdrop of deepening mistrust between the national security community and President Donald Trump’s White House over dealings with Moscow.
The disclosure of the bounty program has highlighted emerging frictions between the U.S. and Russia in other areas, including in Syria.

For years, the two countries have at times supported opposing sides in the long-running civil war — with Moscow propping up Syrian President Bashar al Assad and Washington eventually supporting Kurdish fighters who have pushed for de facto autonomy from the regime. Yet over the course of the war, the U.S. and Russian militaries have communicated regularly in order to deconflict their respective forces on the crowded Syrian battle space. In the first years of the Trump administration, the White House even pushed the Pentagon to increase cooperation with the Russian military in Syria, three former Trump administration officials said.

The directive was disturbing to some members of the national security community, given that Russia has committed war crimes against civilians in Syria.
“They told us we needed to work with Russia and not just ignore them,” said one of the former officials. “We did it, but limited it to just [deconfliction].”
Clashes between Russian and U.S. forces in Syria have rarely turned violent, with one notable exception. In a bloody four-hour battle in 2018, American commandos killed 200-300 pro-Syrian government forces, including Russian mercenaries from the Wagner Group.
Recently, however, American military leaders in Syria are facing increasingly frequent brushes with Russian troops, according to two U.S. officials and one former U.S. official. Russia is deploying its forces closer and closer to U.S. positions in the Deir Ezzor region of eastern Syria, and the two militaries interact multiple times a week, if not daily, compared to roughly monthly last year, the people said.

So far, the two sides have been able to defuse these incidents without violence, said one U.S. military officer. But one of the U.S. officials said Russia and its Syrian and Iranian partners are trying to pressure the U.S. out of Syria altogether.
For instance, earlier this month, Breaking Defense reported that Russian and American troops had a standoff that lasted for hours in northeast Syria. A U.S. official confirmed the incident to POLITICO but said it was nonviolent. Meanwhile, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported last month that the Russian military was building a new base in northern Syria near the Turkish border.

The encroachments in Syria fit into a broader pattern of Russian attempts to test the U.S. commitment to remaining in the broader Middle East. National security experts say the Russian bounty program in Afghanistan is part of that effort.

Like in Syria, the Trump White House initially pushed the Pentagon and intelligence community to engage with the Russians in Afghanistan, said a former Trump defense official. During development of the Pentagon’s South Asia strategy for Afghanistan in 2017, the National Security Council asked defense officials “to look for ways to actively cooperate” with Moscow, particularly in the northern part of the country, the former official said.
“Everyone was like, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa, we aren’t cooperating with the Russians, that’s crazy,” the former official said. One proposal was to have the Russian military run counterterrorism operations in northern Afghanistan. “DOD had to roll in pretty hard opposing the idea,” the official said.

Until 2015, the NATO coalition had an agreement in place with Moscow on a logistics route through Russia, central Asia and the Caucuses, called the northern distribution network, that carried as much as 40 percent of supplies for the coalition’s operations in Afghanistan. But Russia shut down the route in 2015.

Intelligence and defense officials have become increasingly embittered about the White House’s approach to Moscow, particularly regarding the repeated request to increase cooperation with the Russian military, according to four former Trump administration officials, several of whom requested anonymity to discuss sensitive operations.
From the beginning, the Trump White House wanted “a reset with Russia,” which included counterterrorism cooperation, said Marc Polymeropoulos, a former CIA official who retired in 2019. Even so, Moscow consistently rebuffed their efforts, he said.
“This was a nonstop request as part of the administration's oft-stated and well-publicized desire to engage with Moscow,” Polymeropoulos said. “While we once again attempted to engage the Russians, the effort as had always been the case was futile. There was never any gain to the U.S. in this endeavor."

In the days after Trump’s election, incoming national security adviser Michael Flynn immediately tried to increase cooperation between the U.S. and Russia in the region, with the stated goal of fighting terrorism.
“You know that the strategic goal is stability in the Middle East,” he told then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in a conversation about a U.N. Security Council vote on Israeli settlements. “That’s the strategic goal. And, and, you know, between you and I, and you know this, and we know this, you know between Moscow and Washington. We will not achieve stability in the Middle East without working with each other against this radical Islamist crowd. Period.”
Flynn was ousted from the Trump administration in its early days, but his vision of closer cooperation between the U.S. and Russia lived on.

Initially shocked, Pentagon and intelligence officials quickly grew to resent requests for closer cooperation with the Kremlin and to question White House motives, the people said. After an election that the intelligence community determined had seen unprecedented campaign meddling by Russia, officials were especially wary of the new administration and its friendly stance toward Moscow.
“I don’t think the [intelligence community] trusts the White House at all,” said one former Trump administration official. “Not with information, and not to make the right decisions.”

Syria is one place where the Pentagon and White House officials have repeatedly clashed.

Senior defense officials twice pushed back on Trump’s efforts to withdraw U.S. forces from northeast Syria, once in late 2018 — prompting the resignation of then-Secretary of Defense James Mattis — and again in October, 2019, enabling a deadly Turkish invasion of Kurdish-held territory and prompting harsh criticism of the administration for abandoning the Kurds. Both times, the national security community eventually succeeded in convincing the White House to maintain a small force there.

Now that Assad has mostly won the war in the rest of the country, he has turned his attention to Kurdish-controlled areas in the eastern part of the country, where several hundred U.S. troops and their Kurdish partners are still fighting ISIS and guarding the region’s rich oil fields. The tactic has led to some of the emerging conflicts between American and Russian troops.

Natasha Bertrand contributed reporting.

Flynn had to go !

[Peter Brown]

'Russia paying a bounty to Afghans for American military deaths' is the hoax we saw coming a billion miles away.

Going to disappoint a few Democrats to hear who you lefties are in bed with promoting it though...

https://theintercept.com/2020/07/02/hou ... d-germany/

[tech37]

'Russia paying a bounty to Afghans for American military deaths' is the hoax we saw coming a billion miles away.

Going to disappoint a few Democrats to hear who you lefties are in bed with promoting it though...

https://theintercept.com/2020/07/02/hou ... d-germany/

Thanks for posting...a portion:

Shortly after those White House withdrawal plans were reported, anonymous intelligence officials leaked a series of claims to the New York Times regarding “bounties” allegedly being paid by Russia to Taliban fighters to kill U.S. troops. Those leaks emboldened opposition to troop withdrawal from Afghanistan on the ground that it would be capitulating to Russian treachery. It was that New York Times leak that Liz Cheney, along with GOP Congressman Mac Thornberry, cited in a joint statement on Monday to suggest troop withdrawal would be precipitous:

“After today’s briefing with senior White House officials, we remain concerned about Russian activity in Afghanistan, including reports that they have targeted U.S. forces. It has been clear for some time that Russia does not wish us well in Afghanistan. We believe it is important to vigorously pursue any information related to Russia or any other country targeting our forces. Congress has no more important obligation than providing for the security of our nation and ensuring our forces have the resources they need. We anticipate further briefings on this issue in the coming days.”

[old salt]

'Russia paying a bounty to Afghans for American military deaths' is the hoax we saw coming a billion miles away.

Going to disappoint a few Democrats to hear who you lefties are in bed with promoting it though...

https://theintercept.com/2020/07/02/hou ... d-germany/

Thanks for posting...a portion:

Good stuff. More from the Glennzilla :
...left-right anti-war coalition is no match for the war machine composed of the establishment wings of both parties and the military and intelligence community that continue to use selective, illegal leaks to sabotage any plans to reduce the U.S. military presence around the world. That the Democrats have spent a full decade desperately recruiting former military and intelligence officials to serve as their Congressional candidates (both Congressman Crow, Liz Cheney’s co-sponsor on the Afghanistan amendment, and the anti-German-troop-withdrawal Congressman Gallego, are both Iraq War veterans) has only made the party even more militaristic.

Combined with the fact that Democrats are increasingly merging with and being led by the Bush-era neocons and other Bush/Cheney operatives in creating such jingoistic and militaristic messaging campaigns as the beloved-by-liberals Lincoln Project, and that Biden is clearly trying to run to Trump’s right on foreign policy with ads accusing him of being too soft on China and linking him to Castro and Chavez, the picture is clear. It should come as absolutely no surprise that House Democrats are finding common cause with Liz Cheney and other GOP warmongers to block any efforts to reduce even moderately the footprint of the U.S. military in the world or its decades-long posture of endless war.

[tech37]

Russia Offered Afghan Militants Bounties to Kill U.S. Troops

The original NYT headline...how do they get away with this sh!t? Relying on unnamed sources and leaks, they should automatically be forced to include words like "alleged" in their headlines.

[Peter Brown]

Russia Offered Afghan Militants Bounties to Kill U.S. Troops

The original NYT headline...how do they get away with this sh!t? Relying on unnamed sources and leaks, they should automatically be forced to include words like "alleged" in their headlines.

American media is a toxic combination of youthful idiocy and partisan rage. There is zero independent thought, almost no adversarial reporting on Democrats.

It really is a garbage industry today. You need to hunt down credible sources. The absolute worst and most vile reporting is hosted on MSNBC. CNN is too dumb to be that dangerous, but the MSNBC partisans know precisely how often they lie.

It's scary to me how often Democrats such as those that post here parrot the media's idiocy; they have no idea they've been spoon fed brazen lies (such as 'Russia pays for American deaths'), so they repeat them without hesitation. Sad.

[Typical Lax Dad]

Russia Offered Afghan Militants Bounties to Kill U.S. Troops

The original NYT headline...how do they get away with this sh!t? Relying on unnamed sources and leaks, they should automatically be forced to include words like "alleged" in their headlines.

How do you feel about the bounties?

[Typical Lax Dad]

'Russia paying a bounty to Afghans for American military deaths' is the hoax we saw coming a billion miles away.

Going to disappoint a few Democrats to hear who you lefties are in bed with promoting it though...

https://theintercept.com/2020/07/02/hou ... d-germany/

Thanks for posting...a portion:

Good stuff. More from the Glennzilla :
...left-right anti-war coalition is no match for the war machine composed of the establishment wings of both parties and the military and intelligence community that continue to use selective, illegal leaks to sabotage any plans to reduce the U.S. military presence around the world. That the Democrats have spent a full decade desperately recruiting former military and intelligence officials to serve as their Congressional candidates (both Congressman Crow, Liz Cheney’s co-sponsor on the Afghanistan amendment, and the anti-German-troop-withdrawal Congressman Gallego, are both Iraq War veterans) has only made the party even more militaristic.

Combined with the fact that Democrats are increasingly merging with and being led by the Bush-era neocons and other Bush/Cheney operatives in creating such jingoistic and militaristic messaging campaigns as the beloved-by-liberals Lincoln Project, and that Biden is clearly trying to run to Trump’s right on foreign policy with ads accusing him of being too soft on China and linking him to Castro and Chavez, the picture is clear. It should come as absolutely no surprise that House Democrats are finding common cause with Liz Cheney and other GOP warmongers to block any efforts to reduce even moderately the footprint of the U.S. military in the world or its decades-long posture of endless war.

You are anti-military

[Peter Brown]

Russia Offered Afghan Militants Bounties to Kill U.S. Troops

The original NYT headline...how do they get away with this sh!t? Relying on unnamed sources and leaks, they should automatically be forced to include words like "alleged" in their headlines.

How do you feel about the bounties?

"the bounties"

No one is this gullible. If he is, we must take pity on the young man.

[old salt]

Aussies will acquire long range missiles :

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-53244752

PM Scott Morrison pledged A$270bn (£150bn; $186bn) to Australia's arms budget over 10 years - a 40% boost.

He said Australia would acquire long-range missiles and other capabilities to "deter" future conflicts.

It was necessary because the region was the "focus of the dominant global contest of our age", he added.

Mr Morrison named several areas of tension including the border between India and China, and conflict over the South China Sea and East China Sea.

It follows deteriorating relations between Australia and China - which are widely seen to be at their worst in decades.

What is Australia spending money on?
The new defence capability budget - about 2% of GDP - replaces a previous decade-long strategy, set only in 2016, which had set aside A$195bn.

Mr Morrison said much spending would go to upgrading arms and equipment.

Australia will purchase from the US Navy up to 200 long-range anti-ship missiles, which can travel up to 370km (229 miles). It will also invest in developing a hypersonic weapons system - missiles which can travel thousands of kilometres.

Up to A$15b would be spent on cyber warfare tools - which the prime minister noted "says a lot about where the threats are coming from".

Last month, he warned that Australian institutions and businesses were being targeted by cyber attacks from a "sophisticated state actor". The remarks were broadly interpreted as aimed at China.

Another US ally answering Trump's call to share more of the common defense burden.

[youthathletics]

Moving the chess pieces into place.

[Typical Lax Dad]

Moving the chess pieces into place.

Did Bobby Fischer ever find out if Finland is part of Russia?

[youthathletics]

Moving the chess pieces into place.

Did Bobby Fischer ever find out if Finland is part of Russia?

No, but Magnus Carlson says Norway might be part of both.

[Typical Lax Dad]

Moving the chess pieces into place.

Did Bobby Fischer ever find out if Finland is part of Russia?

No, but Magnus Carlson says Norway might be part of both.

Enjoy the hero worship.

[youthathletics]

Moving the chess pieces into place.

Did Bobby Fischer ever find out if Finland is part of Russia?

No, but Magnus Carlson says Norway might be part of both.

Enjoy the hero worship.

Likewise

[Typical Lax Dad]