Winston Churchill wrote in his autobiography, “In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies,”
This phrase fits perfectly with modern information wars. Russia and America are now in such a war. Therefore, the story that the omnipresent GRU* generously thanked the Taliban (banned in the Russian Federation) for the head of every American killed should be considered from this viewpoint.
And in this sense, the paranoia about “Putin and his regime” reigning in the minds of not only American Democrats — who will not calm down at all about their defeat in 2016, due to “Russian interference” — but the entire Congress and almost the entire American political establishment is measured and well-orchestrated. Because war is war.
We will analyze the case from the point of view of propaganda and psychological warfare (after all, the latter is my military specialty).
So, what do we have? A series of publications from The New York Times which in this case acts as the “party paper” of the Democratic Party — precisely following the principles of comrade Lenin as prescribed in the article “Party Organization and Party Literature.” But adjusted according to the requirements of the time, and according to which there is no real truth; but there is a “post-truth.”
“Incriminating information,” we note, does not come out in a deluge, but emerges in drops. This is effective in maintaining constant interest, as the Times’ series does; the intrigue develops with increasing disclosures, and when a political party starts cheating.
As the saying goes, “Where there is smoke, there is fire,” thus the layman gradually becomes accustomed to the idea that Russians are weaving plots with the Taliban (which is banned in Russia, incidentally), against Americans. So far, however, the accounting system doesn’t add up; the Taliban should be delivering the scalps of Marines (or at least their cut off ears) to the Russian Embassy in Kabul. Let’s wait; maybe that idea will go public.
Nor does the timing of the revelation seem accidental.
The hated Democrats have hinted that Trump wants to invite the even more hated Putin to the G-7 summit. By this time, it has become tiresome to deal with the intense rush of news from the devilry that goes under the name “Black Lives Matter” (the media can’t keep up the “hype” for too many things at once), and the demolition of monuments across the country that has become routine. Yet the idea has been repeated ad nauseum that Russia has long — for a couple of years — schemed with the Taliban (banned in Russia) supplying them with weapons and so on. And American negotiators are said to have repeatedly raised questions about “the negotiations” with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
The foreign minister, however, managed to refute it. But who will believe him? True, the U.S. State Department also did not endorse the accusation. Apparently, it is a lie from beginning to end (including the initial raising of the issue during negotiations). But it doesn’t matter. The guardians of the lie are front and center. But one thing about the publication doesn’t make sense: Why did the Times keep silent about this for two years?
We will not go into details about how, purely hypothetically, a decision could be made in Russia through special services channels concerning the supply of arms and money to an organization that is officially designated as a terrorist group. In films, this “works;” in real life, not really, even for the legendary GRU. As we saw from the examples of past “revelations,” Russian accounting standards (even the receipts for taxi payments during a business trip in Salisbury) are quite reliable.
It’s even funnier to notice the reference to a “bank account controlled by Russian military intelligence.” Allegedly, this is where the money for the Taliban (banned in Russia) came from – seriously, this card?
Then it’s said that they nevertheless used the hawala money transfer system, which is widespread in the Islamic world. But then where is the bank account? And the bank isn’t named. It would be interesting to find out where the GRU checking account is. But it doesn’t matter anymore.
The principle itself is important. In our country, it is called “s— hitting the fan.”
And they’ve smartly used the Gish gallop technique. This is the name of a debate tactic, named after its inventor, a prominent representative of the creationist movement, Duane Tolbert Gish. It’s based on the fact if a huge number of unverified, unreliable and simply false facts and details are laid on the opponent, he will simply not be able to refute them, due to their diversity and absurdity. For example, how could there even be serious discussion?
But this deluge of facts is used to create the impression to an outside observer that the one spitting them out is generally right. This tactic is well mastered by many of our propagandists. But I’m not talking about that right now.
In keeping with Gish galloping tactics, the Times’ publications metered out new details. First, the talk about anonymous sources (interrogations of Afghan special services, which are certainly famous for their strong procedural traditions). Then a certain “intermediary” appears (personification of information is important — so, once again, the right move) between the Russians and the Taliban (banned in Russia) by the name of Azizi. He found a cache of half a million dollars.
And where there is a cache, in the view of Times journalists and the simple American layman, there are certainly Russians hiding somewhere nearby in the bushes. And nothing about the aforementioned Azizi moonlighting as a drug dealer. It’s clear that the GRU is paying more generously than are Colombian drug lords.
No less amusing is the amount that the insidious Russians allegedly promised for the head of every slain Marine. One. Hundred. Thousand. Dollars. Considering that 23 U.S. troops were killed in Afghanistan last year, more than $2 million in cash supposedly crossed the GRU checkout counter. Was it brought in through the embassy or on a camel through Tajikistan?
We’re waiting for the details. By the way, for reference, the basic cost of a Stinger portable missile installation, which the United States used to deliver to Afghanistan to combat the “Soviet invasion” (and then bought at exorbitant prices across the world) is $38,000. The GRU overpaid!
The sum of $100,000 is designed to impress congressmen — who are preparing a bill recognizing Russia as a sponsor of international terrorism — and the simple layman. The latter was taught by Hollywood that the life of an American soldier, a “Private Ryan,” cannot be cheap.
The average person doesn’t know (and should not) that during the Chechen War, for example, 100 bucks, no more no less, was enough to enlist a simple indoctrinated, impoverished man, to install a mine where necessary. Tajik Islamists, they say, were even cheaper at 20 bucks. It’s unlikely that prices for impoverished Afghans were much higher. Even reasoning purely hypothetically. But no one writes about such a rogue scandal in a solid newspaper.
The original message is absurd. But for us, not for the American public.
It turns out that the Taliban (banned in Russia) didn’t want to kill the Yankees for free, but for Russian loot. Which completely denies an ideology for their holy war. So what have they been doing all these years? Only when the loot arrived did they begin to kill.
And the cunning Putin (who else?), who gave such an order to his special services, clearly decided — in a suicidal mania – to play with fire via America in Afghanistan. Otherwise there would be little scandal and few sanctions after the U.S. elections in 2016.
Another terrorist organization was mentioned in the revelations, in addition to the Taliban (banned in Russia). This is the Haqqani Network. Allegedly, the Russians were plotting with them, too. It was founded by Jalaluddin Haqqani, who died in 2018, back when Afghan Islamist terrorists were respectfully called “Mujahadeen” by America and Osama bin Laden’s associates were directly funded by the CIA.
Now that group, acting in alliance with the Taliban (banned in Russia), and enthusiastically and wildly killing Americans for years is led by his son Sirajuddin. Everyone who pays attention to Afghanistan knows that they are closely connected to the Pakistani secret service (based close to the border between the two countries) and are financed by them. And, in theory, allegations of financing the “killers of the U.S. military,” should be addressed to Islamabad. There are many more reasons, but as we understand it, this is not the purpose of the party newspaper, The New York Times.
By the way, I recently learned, most curiously, about the rich creative path of one of the current passionate whistleblower journalists. His name is David Sanger. He is trying to “sculpt lies,” no worse than some of us tried to do during the Malaysian Boeing disaster over Donbass.
Sanger is a senior journalist. He is using the tactic of casting out the information that Russians supposedly have long-standing ties with the Taliban (banned in Russia) in exactly the same way he did in 2002 regarding Iraq and weapons of mass destruction. (This was mentioned several times in his article in the summer of 2002).
At the time, Sanger acted as one of the informational masterminds of the invasion of Iraq. Later, he was caught lying about the involvement of Tony Blair’s British government in this operation (subsequently recognized by London as a mistake). But who will remember now? And it was Sanger who was one of the first — on January 6, 2017 — to begin his article with “American intelligence officials have concluded that the president of Russia, Vladimir V. Putin, personally ‘ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the U.S. presidential election.’ ”
It’s also curious that the so-called “daily briefings” were part of the informational preparation of the Bush administration for the invasion of Iraq, which eventually lead to the current scandal about Russians and the Taliban (banned in Russia).
Specifically, at the behest of then Vice President Dick Cheney, information was thrown into these materials that Saddam Hussein was receiving uranium from Nigeria. The International Atomic Energy Agency checked this for two days, then called it a blatant lie; however, what was remembered by the public was only the rumor that was first filed in the briefing.
But Bush was looking for any justification for the invasion. It worked.
This is exactly why Trump’s opponents are blaming his administration: the fact that a certain “rumor” was not communicated to him personally, and that the president, in turn, did not take harsh retaliatory measures against Moscow. The fact is that a certain senior CIA official who reported to the president stood in the way of his learning about it. She considered the information about the collusion between Russia and the Taliban (banned in Russia) as false and didn’t include it in the final version of the report.
True, National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien (clearly covering his ass) claims that he had this information in his files. The memory of his predecessor, John Bolton, has been reawakened just in time. Bolton is terribly offended by Trump for dismissing and humiliating him in the past, and has already managed to print a voluminous book which paints Trump as an incompetent boor and an idiot. They say he now recalls, that yes, he reported something to his boss back in 2019 about the Russians.
And here it’s worth quoting from Bolton’s interview in 2010 on Fox News. When asked how he relates to misinformation in international relations, he replied, “Absolutely. If I had to say something I knew was false to protect American national security, I would do it.”
He continued to say that in international relations, “they are not dealing in the civil society we live in under the Constitution. They are dealing in an anarchic environment internationally where different rules apply.”
Then future National Security Advisor Bolton continued, “I think defending the United States from foreign threats does require actions that in a normal business environment in the United States we would find unprofessional. I don’t make any apology for it.”
So, in fact, an information campaign is being conducted against Moscow in approximately the same style as that conducted in 2002 against Iraq on the eve of the invasion of that country. The difference is that the purpose is not war in the literal sense, but the adoption of a law that would establish the procedure for recognizing Russia as a sponsor of international terrorism, with all the accompanying sanctions (which would make the current sanctions look like roses). And so Russia finds itself in the same company as countries (as recognized by America) like Iran, Sudan, North Korea and Syria.
This doesn’t mean that one should be likened to David Sanger or the nervous elderly Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who is so upset at Trump and the Russians that she can’t eat. No need to fall into anti-American hysteria on all fronts. In the coming years, we will coexist with this country as an enemy, just as it will with us.
But someday we’ll make peace with America – I’d love to. But not now – certainly not until 2024. And not at all with this generation of politicians. And this apparently means that, for the foreseeable future, if we simply cease to have any business with America at all (even downgrading relations — or a diplomatic breakdown), it will be for the best.
Maybe we only need to completely nullify our relations in order to start over again, as Washington and Minsk are trying to now, rejoicing in every minor positive bit of nonsense. Wait until the U.S. calms down, while we enter another stage of our development. Or the U.S. will treat us about the same as Pakistan. There’s nothing you can do about it, because it can always get worse.
Editor’s Note: * The GRU (sometimes abbreviated G.U.) is Russia’s military intelligence agency.
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