Another Russian Collusion Hoax

One thing about the Trump-hating media. They never give up. The Russian collusion story turned out to be a hoax. The Ukraine impeachment scandal went up in smoke.

Fear not, the New York Times and other media outlets have been breathlessly reporting that the Trump administration knew that Russia had put out a bounty on the lives of American soldiers in Afghanistan, and did nothing about it.

It seems that the story was fabricated, perhaps by a Trump hating whistleblower. History repeats itself....

It does not matter. Cue the outrage. Also, cue the double standard. Mollie Hemingway (via Maggie's Farm) remarks that the Obama administration was informed about a bounty placed by Iran on American troops in Afghanistan. Was Obama a profile in courage? Did he retaliate against the Iranian regime?

Hemingway reports:

One goal seems to be to paint Trump as someone who does not care about American soldiers. This talking point is odd. Iran reportedly offered the Taliban $1,000 bounties in 2010 for American soldiers’ deaths in Afghanistan. Not only was no action taken by President Obama at the time, six years later, he authorized the payment of $1.7 billion to the regime.

By contrast, President Trump authorized the killing of Iran’s Qasem Soleimani, responsible for the deaths of more than 600 U.S. service members. When that happened, based on what the Trump administration said was responsibility for those deaths and intelligence that further attacks were planned, many in the media questioned the strength of that intelligence analysis.

Speaking of the Obama administration’s many derelictions, how about this one. It had repeatedly been informed about the rise of ISIS. But it did nothing about it. Keep in mind, before Obama, there was no caliphate. During Obama, there was a caliphate. After Obama, there was no caliphate. You don't need a triple-digit IQ to figure it out.

Matt Margolis reports:

A national security staffer in the Obama-Biden administration told the Daily Mail in 2014 that Barack Obama was getting “highly accurate predictions” about the rise of the ISIS “before the 2012 election.” The intelligence was described as “actionable.”

Rather than accept responsibility for his failure, Obama publicly faulted his Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, for underestimating ISIS.

A former Pentagon official also told then-Fox News national security correspondent Catherine Herridge that Obama received “specific intelligence” about the rise of ISIS in his presidential daily briefings for at least a year:

A former Pentagon official confirms to Fox News that detailed and specific intelligence about the rise of ISIS was included in the PDB, or the President’s Daily Brief, for at least a year before the group took large swaths of territory beginning in June.

The official, who asked not to be identified because the PDB is considered the most authoritative, classified intelligence community product providing the President with analysis of sensitive international events, said the data was strong, and “granular” in detail, adding a policy maker “… could not come away with any other impression: This is getting bad.” 

The official who has close knowledge of the process said the President, who reads the PDB unlike his predecessors who traditionally had the document briefed to them, was not known to come back to the intelligence community with further questions or “taskings.” Asked to describe the frequency, the former Pentagon official said “not generally.”

After suggestions that the administration may have been blindsided by the rise of ISIS, and that poor intelligence was to blame, the former Pentagon official said some of the intelligence was so good it was described as “exquisite”.

According to Lt. General Michael Flynn, who was Obama’s former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Obama White House ignored reports warning about the rise of ISIS in 2011 and 2012 because they did not fit Obama’s reelection narrative that al Qaeda was on the run and that we were winning the war on terror.

The best part of the Trump Russia story is that it elicited a comment from the nation’s greatest sore loser, the nation’s leading enabler of sexual harassment. That would be HIllary Clinton, herself, in person. Keep in mind that, in 2010, when Iran was putting a bounty on American lives, the dowager duchess of Chappaqua was Secretary of State. Do you remember her full-throated outrage? Neither do I.

Naturally, she bought the story about Trump. Once an idiot, always an idiot. And she tweeted out her own view:

“Either he knew and chose to do nothing, or he didn't know because he couldn't be bothered to do his job.” 

Well stated from the woman who bore responsibility for the security of American ambassadors, and who did not merely fall down on the job when it came to Benghazi, but who refused to take any responsibility for what happened.

In an exchange with one Barbra Streisand-- someone whose knowledge of foreign policy ranks with Hillary’s-- the former Secretary had this to say about the fabricated story about Trump:

I would have read my damn briefs, Barbra, that's for sure.

Just as she read and took action on the 600 or so emails that late Ambassador Christopher Stevens sent her asking for better security in Libya.

Yes, indeed, being a Clinton means never having to say you’re sorry.