Independent investigative reporter Gareth Porter just published the piece “How the Pentagon failed to sell Afghan government’s bunk ‘Bountygate’ story to U.S. intelligence agencies” at The Grayzone, which summarizes his findings thus: “Another New York Times Russiagate bombshell turns out to be a dud, as dodgy stories spun out by Afghan intelligence and exploited by the Pentagon ultimately failed to convince U.S. intelligence agencies.” [Also see 2017 article — “Should Media Expose Sources Who Lied to Them?” — by Sam Husseini for the media watch group FAIR.]
MATTHEW HOH, matthew_hoh at riseup.net
Hoh resigned in protest from his State Department position in Afghanistan in 2009 over the escalation of the Afghan War by the Obama administration; he also served in Iraq with the Marines. He has recently been featured on two accuracy.org news release: “Is Big Media Echoing Accusations to Demonize Russia and Continue Afghan War?” and “Inconvenient Facts: U.S. Killed Russians in Syria and Afghanistan.”
Hoh said today: “I think it is all more of the same: anonymous, unverifiable and evidence free accusations that have blatant domestic political beneficiaries, breathlessly exclaimed by a press which cheerleads constantly for U.S. foreign policy, as well as U.S. intelligence and military agencies, without regard for or acknowledgment of the vast catalogue of lying by those same intelligence and military agencies for political and institutional purposes. The question that should be asked by everyone is why should any of these institutions or individuals be believed.
“If these accusations of Russian bounties are true, than rather than reporting and responding to them as a chain of Russian conspiracies in Afghanistan against a benevolent and passive United States they should be understood for what they are: the consequences of U.S. war in Afghanistan, not only for the last 19 years, but the last 40 years, as well as the eternal consequences of waging these unending wars in the Muslim world.
“These too are the consequences warned of in the 1990s as the United States and NATO expanded its military presence eastward towards the Russian border. The Doomsday Clock is now at 100 seconds to midnight, the closest it has ever been to midnight since its inception in 1947. The people of the world are trapped in-between the 6,000 active and armed nuclear weapons of the United States and Russia, and further surrounded by climate change, pandemic, and exploitative neo-liberal economic policies. Meanwhile, both U.S. political parties utilize these accusations, and resulting tensions with Russia, for their own political benefit, while politicians, retired generals, the weapons industry and other elements of the $1.2 trillion annual war machine are using these well timed accusations to destroy peace attempts in and U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, as well as justify $15 billion aircraft carriers, $2 billion bombers and $10 million tanks, along with a plan to spend $1.5 trillion on new nuclear weapons, resume nuclear testing and put weapons in space.”
