White House acknowledges that the "Russian bounties" story was likely false.

 

Soldiers in Afghanistan. BBC/Getty.

The White House acknowledged that the "Russian bounties" story in the leadup to the 2020 election was based on sketchy intelligence. BBC. The story alleged that Russia was paying the Taliban to kill US troops in Afghanistan. Russia and the Taliban both denied the story and President Trump dismissed it as "fake news" and "not credible". However, both the media and the Biden campaign slammed Trump on the issue, accusing him of being weak on Russia. Now the White House has revealed that the story was based on intelligence that US spy chiefs rated with low to moderate confidence. The intelligence supposedly came from Afghani detainees. The confidence in the story is now so low that the Biden administration did not cite it for the new sanctions they put on the Russian government. 

My Comment:

Yet another story used to attack President Trump that turned out to be false. Not that anyone should have believed the story in the first place. I dismissed it out of hand when the story broke out last year as it did not make a lick of sense in the first place. 

Why not? Because nobody needed to pay the Taliban to attack US troops in the first place. They hate America and our troops and will attack them for free. They had no reason to demand money for killing Americans.

And the Russians? What would they gain from this scenario? The Taliban and other forces are already attacking Americans in Afghanistan, why pay them to do what they are already doing? And it makes zero sense for them to want to escalate tensions with the United States this way. We already had some close calls in Syria and there is no reason why Putin and Russia would want to make things worse. It was a nonsense story to begin with.  

So why did the media run with it? Because they thought it hurt President Trump's election chances. That's it. I am guessing they knew the story was false but ran with it anyways. If a layman like me can figure it out than the professional journalists could do so as well. But they wanted to push the "Trump is a Russian puppet" angle regardless of how untrue it is. 

Speaking of which, the entire idea that Trump was a Russian puppet was absurd on its' face. I had said for a long time that President Trump was not a pro-Russian president and it was one of the things I was critical about him with. I personally wanted to see much better relations with Russia and a withdrawal from our conflicts with them in Ukraine and Syria, but that didn't happen. To argue that he was somehow doing their bidding while blowing up Russian mercenaries in Syria and arming Ukrainian militias is absurd on its face. 

As for Biden himself, it seems like he is blinking on Russia. Putin outmaneuvered him in Ukraine and now he is admitting that a major anti-Russia story is mostly bunk. It's not a sign of strength that our ships got turned around before entering the Black Sea. Our relations with Russia are not good at all and seem to be getting worse. And Putin understands that Biden is a fundamentally weak president. 

I also think that Biden should be criticized for his actions in the campaign. By hyping this story he further damaged relations with Russia and that would have been a net negative no matter who won. Russia killing US troops is a casus belli for war and it's possible that if Trump had overcome the 2020 election, he may have had to respond to Russia. Even so, Biden hurt his own relations with Putin, who presumably doesn't appreciate being accused of signing bounties on the lives of US troops.