Russia Paid Bounties to Murder US Troops, Trump Lets Them

Random thoughts:

• Actually agree with glynch that this has kind of a Benghazi!1! flavor to it on the basic merits. Nobody should be surprised that Russia pays adversaries for US deaths. (I mean, their well-documented disinformation campaigns also try to convince Americans not to vaccinate, so that costs lives too.) As a US citizen who reads lots of things, I just assume Russia is daily spending money to harm us. That's based on evidence.
• Given that this kind of crap is probably happening all over the place, all the time, it's not clear what the US is supposed to do (besides, yes, not inviting Russia to rejoin G7/G8). For all we know, there have been steps taken through other channels. (I doubt much has happened from the WH side b/c general incompetence non-stop distractions.)
• Totally believe Trump was not in the loop. It just fits, and I'd prefer him to be out of as many important loops as possible. He's the worst. And I mean like the worst American I can think of.
• The interesting part of the story, again, is the bizarro and incompetent attempts at deflection. One statement: "we've known about this for a long time. it's covert. we're handling it through covert channels and not escalating to war, clearly. American soldiers' lives are sacred to us and we work to keep them alive every day." Boom, done. But no. They try literally every other angle conceivable, one after the other. LOL.
• Another interesting angle, however, is that it does seem to put more distance between Trump and everyday troops, following on the heels of Mad Dog's laser-like blast.
• Tiny interesting angle: maybe some conservatives or Trumpites are actually surprised by this Russian program and are thinking of retiring their "better Russian than a democrat" T-shirts, at least until October or so.

 

Pentagon found no evidence.
Who to believe now....

 

Thanks for voting in the worst human scum ever to the highest office in the land.

DD

 

Just staggering levels of incompetence.

 

They really don't need to be bringing me into the conversation as a scapegoat.

 

I've said over and over to my wife and oldest son that we'd be better off with a pile of dog poo in the president's office. The pile of dog poo would do about the same amount of work that Don the Con does and would probably screw crap up less (allies would probably be offended at meeting the dogpoo, but at least our enemies wouldn't take advantage of it like they do the Orange clown).

He is an abject failure at everything except "riling up the libs" and he's done so well at that job that we saw record turn out to vote in Dems in 2018 and will likely see a huge turnout in 2020 to vote against him. Hell, he may have turned off a few generations of people off of voting Republican anytime soon as well as enhanced the importance of getting out and voting to those same people. Hope the Orange troll was worth it for his supporters because they may be seeing the end of their "majority" for the near future.

 

The Gang of Eight should not be surprised by the NYT story and should not be briefed after the story was published.

 

FIFY.

 

I know. For them to use your signature, trade-marked line, "unlikely," against you... you hate to see it.

 

Politically, this obviously hurts Trump's "tough guy" image and will be fodder for the campaign. Geo-politically, this isn't very surprising.

 

I agree with everything except comparing it to Benghazi which was a well orchestrated hit job.

The real issue for me is another example of incompetence and disorganization, can you imagine the meal republicans would have made of this if it was Hillary or Obama?

Unlike Benghazi this will blow over in about a week or 2.

 

Benghazi was definitely worth investigating and certainly a matter for Congressional oversight. You can't have a US diplomatic mission overrun and four Americans killed including an ambassador without looking into why that happened. We can disagree with how long the investigation went and how it was conducted but it needed to be investigated.

This situation is also something that should at least be looked into. A strategic adversary paying for the deaths of US soldiers isn't something to just be dismissed.

 

Yeah, it's not a great comparison, I just mean that both involved unfortunate overseas events and American loss of life (not on the scale of COVID, obviously). I personally would prefer more hands wrung over the pandemic than this bounty issue.

 

I agree with some of it. But I don't necessarily agree with the response to Russia part. I think we enact sanctions and make a public stink to let other nations know we are serious and not sitting ducks. It's also good to let our troops know we support them and are taking actions for them. They do a lot for us.

 

Yes it needed to be investigated but they created a scapegoat in Hillary, facts be dammed.

The question that needs to be answered here is did Trump know and why if not.

 

trump calling it a hoax again...

 

Because they stay on the topic of the Russian Bounty it is a bait and switch?

That is said in defense of the president who hasn't addressed the issue at all except to pretend that he wasn't briefed?