Continuing the allegation of Russian bounty payments to Taliban to kill US troops, Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley both told the House Armed Services Committee that they’ve seen no corroboration of the claim, nor do they believe anyone was actually killed on the basis of it.
This allegation emerged last month in the New York Times and has been oft-repeated, despite a lack of evidence. Earlier this week, a poll showed a majority of Americans believe the claim, though the military has repeatedly said they just don’t have the evidence to defend it. Centcom’s commander has also recently doubted it.
Beyond military doubts, US intelligence has also expressed major doubts, saying they have “low confidence” of the allegations. It is unclear why this continues, when between military leadership and intelligence community no one seems to be buying the story.
That said, Milley told the committee that if it turns out this claim is true, something that looks remotely unlikely, he said that the US would respond against Russia in some non-specific way.
Holding off on proof is the key here, however. The polls that showed the public supports the allegation also showed support for US sanctions, or potentially military action against Russia. That all comes even with the evidence strongly pointing to this not being true.
Presumably the comments from officials preclude the US taking any hasty action, but the importance of polls, particularly in election years, could signal another round of worsening ties between the US and Russia.
Russia, for its part, has denied any involvement in this allegation, and the Taliban has similarly denied taking any money to continue the fighting.
What do Esper and Milley know? I believe only what I read in the NY Times 🙂
Americans have no idea what the truth is anymore. Can you really blame them when everyone with half an ounce of power lies to them? Everything has become hypothetical now. Reality is a delusion we no longer share collectively. This is what the state has reduced us to.
Predictable launch of the information age..lies, porn and surveillance.
Do we have a state? Most of it privatized. From elected, to appointed, to civil service. With state gone, we are at the mercy of those who create the delusion for us, called the reality. In which media is the key component. Whoever owns it, controls its main purpose — control the populace by whatever means. Right, left, good, bad or weird — anything goes.
Big business and big government are virtually interchangeable. One can’t exist without the other. It’s called corporatism and it’s the cornerstone of fascism.
Since there is no government function that has been one way or another outsourced through corporate contracts, which part of the government is still absolutely necessary? Somebody wish is coming through — state is disappearing, and decision-making is going private.
Judicial branch has been cleverly undermined by technological platforms acting as judges in censoring and removing information. Instead of making sure that Facebook remains platform, and individual publishers of information subject to same laws and same accountability — we have allowed private entity to be the judge of individual right under law. An entirely separate private quasi-legal justice has been born under our noses — with privileged interests dispensing verdicts.
One can go on and on. We are becoming polar opposite from China and increasingly from Russia. We are evolving into corporations run state — they into state run corporations. If I equate state money with taxpayers money — then corporations run state will always be broke, while state run corporations will fill the taxpayers treasury.
How to run a state with continuous borrowing? It is magic.
Not sure about magic. It might, or should, become apparent to the US populace, that the state can create money and send it where they please. Usually, the money is sent to the donor class, and returns to the particular party in the form of election “donations”. In the case of the covid bailout, a bunch of this money made it to the working class, making them wonder, where does it come from ? It is not magic, it is faith. People believe that government/banks are managing a system in the people’s interest. They don’t. Sending working people money from nothing should make them realize that they have been doing it all along. Just made the mistake of giving working people some. They won’t repeat the mistake.
Very good point. But what most people missed in COVID bailout is that BEFORE approving bailout THREE TRILLION DOLLARS within two days went SOMEWHERE based on the decision of NY FED ONLY. The entire FED did not make that decision, and apparently NY FED financed this. Where did it go? The bailout passed by Congress is separate funding from those three trillion.
The best I understood was — gone to stabilize treasuries market. Again, to whom was it paid? An example was Bank of Japan — many investors lost money in stock market and to pay margin calls, were selling easily cashed US treasuries. But Bank of Japan that sold the Treasuries could not pay out — it had not enough dollars. Those trillions were loans to Banks to buy back Treasuries. But now, a bank — say Bank of Japan had to buy back Treasuries it sold, and with borrowed money. But what does it mean for all those banks long term — no clue. It is really not clear what happens to our solvency when essentially forced to finance paying out holders of our debt?
“state is disappearing”
In what universe?
Yes, the state is moving much of its decision-making into the faux-“private” hands of its cronies so as to better insulate that decision-making from popular influence, but that’s just a move back toward the essential nature of the state, which is always the executive committee of the ruling class.
It’s true that corporatism is the cornerstone of fascism.
But it’s also true that corporatism isn’t what you’re trying to define it as here.
Explain.
It’s not complicated:
1) There’s a philosophy called corporatism.
2) It’s a big part of the basis for Mussolini-style fascism.
3) It has nothing to do with “big business”/”corporations” as we think of them. It’s more along the lines of guild socialism.
Does it not require a marriage of big business and big government to exist?
For the love of Pete — plug the word “corporatism” into Wikipedia and let them explain it at length.
The “corporations” involved in the system called “corporatism” aren’t — or at least are far from only — the business concerns we call “corporations.” “Corporatism” isn’t just another word for “crony capitalism.”
“Corporatism may also refer to economic tripartism involving negotiations between labour and business interest groups and the government to establish economic policy.[4] This is sometimes also referred to as neo-corporatism or social democratic corporatism.[5]”
Wikipedia. Once again, I think we’ve just been using different dictionaries. Though your definition does seem to be more closely related to fascism.
Let’s just keep on talking about it. It will stay in the news, one way or another. Wait for election, and suddenly it will be some analyst from Bezos controlled analytical section of CIA to find that dusty, conveniently tucked away document proving it is all true! After election, another era.
Neocons got the formula on Trump. He cannot appear a loser. He must win, or at least deny those bad Russians, Iranians, Chinese a win, There cannot be any peace in Libya, Syria, Afghanistan unless Trump is a winner. It is mighty easy for him to prevent peace in Syria — even by using his favorite whipping boy, UN. to challenge aid distribution border crossings, to prevent the perception that Russia is a winner. Cannot pull out of Iraq, and let Iranians win! And it is easy to keep Libya in the state of war, by supporting whatever side seems to be winning, just to prevent perception that US has thrown its hands up on Libya. Or heavens forbid — make it look like Russia had something to do the solution.
But Afghanistan, that looked like a clear winner for Trump. He controls the situation, right? Pull troops, cut a peace deal, all optics looked good! And than, out of nowhere — Russia will be the winner should Trump withdraw.
He thought it was safe to pull some troops from Germany. Not so fast — the only way to do it, is to poke Russia in the eye, and send them to Poland.
Every neocon goal advanced.
Perhaps…yet trump has been romancing Poland for some time, and listening to eric prince on privatizing the money assets in Afghanistan.
In order for base building to occur in Poland, the US needs to deploy troops there. The politics of sending additional US troops didn’t fit, so the trump people came up with the German transfer. I suppose the troops in Germany will just be replaced after the election. The empire creeps east. No one ever comes home in trumps shuffling of Titanic deck chairs.
The dark money in Afghanistan remains unknown to the US voter. Does a 4000 troop drawdown actually mean less total troops and mercenaries ? I don’t know, and neither does any other US common voter. And those 4000 ? Is there a parade as they debark home ? No, endless war continues.
Exactly. Trump had — what appeared an easy winner. End endless wars, withdraw troops. But things have been turned around, and now it is all about not being a loser anywhere. Any change in foreign policy that favors reduction of military commitments around the globe is a non-starter. Now Trump base is all up in arms about whatever foreign foe and Democrats have never questioned empire. So it is full steam ahead, perhaps few noises from Trump — he will have to be careful as he did not achieve a major breakthrough. Afghanistan now looks controversial,
Back in 2015, Obama called for the end of the current war on terror authorization. This authorization is the key to endless wars. Obama went all in on his Afghan surge, chose poorly intervening in the arab spring. By the time he made this statement, his credibility was shite. The ME was in rubble. This is exactly the antiwar problem I have with trump. He inherited a war weary population. It wouldn’t take much to move out., yet, here we are mired everywhere and more when he came in. Time wasted. But, trump didn’t only promise to end endless wars, he promised to win them. Noone, even him, knows what that means. For anti-interventionists trumps clock has run out with no observable drawdown anywhere. In fact, it is expansion, or, huh ?, everywhere. The key for trump, is to promote the end of the war on terror authorization, as Obama had done. This, obviously, he has never done. Next.
I remember that. Too well. Painfully well. I ditched my independent streak, and actually worked for Obama from primaries on. One learns a lot slugging through primaries, and in different states.
Where I learned about Hillary Clinton and her character. And to learn that she was going to run State Department — it was a shock. Having friends who worked there — I know what kind of shock it was to employees. Total depression. She knew it, and made sure to tell them that Obama gave her complete authority to run it as she saw fit. It was downhill for Obama from the start. I do not think he ever made decisions on his own — Democratic Party like Republicans, is a corporation. And he was the spokesperson.
Even though Party knew that she lost to Obama as she had a serious trust deficit in public eyes — they still had to put her forward in 2016. It is a small clique with powerful interests behind — and they TRUST her. Trump does what he has to do – maintain empire — but they do not trust him. He can go solo, and they have to clean up after him. Like in Syria. He actually made a good decision to withdraw, it was getting very messy. But the horrified imperial guard saw to this that US soldiers hang around, prevent peace.
We are witnessing stage play, with politicians making noises we like to hear, then back to business.
I was very hopeful that Trump was going to be a wrecking ball. Someone that will make others lose their nerve, make mistakes. And it is happening. But our choices are still poor. Trump’s America is a mercantile nation with gunboat diplomacy 19th century style. Democrats’ America is globalized, with international trade legislation and judiciary superseding national, with broken democratic institutions all over the globe, privatizing in the end the air we breathe — so with one (financial) ring to rule them all.
Preserving nations as a defense against globalized spider webs is still a more pressing task — even though we will be manipulated and whipsawed by them all.
This story is every bit as stupid as Russiagate. When did the Taliban ever need to be paid to kill American soldiers? As far as I know they’ve been more than happy to kill troops free of charge for as long as we’ve been in Afghanisan.