Thread by @ggreenwald

The bullshit story about Russian bounties on US troops planted by the CIA -- to destroy Trump's ability to leave Afghanistan -- was laundered by the NYT, and it worked. When pro-war Dems joined with Liz Cheney to try to defund withdrawal, they repeatedly cited that NYT story.

https://twitter.com/Jacob__Siegel/status/1427925360377794564

The false NYT story that came from their CIA friends - Russia has placed bounties on the heads of US soldiers in Afghanistan! -- was repeatedly used by Liz Cheney and her pro-war Dem colleagues to block withdrawal. Listen to her say it:

https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1393202999611346944

Then, when the NYT story was proven to be a fraud, when their stenography service to the CIA got exposed, @BretBaier confronted Liz Cheney about the role she played in spreading it, and she lied and pretended she hadn't:

https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1393202644450152452

I absolutely still support both Trump and Biden's adamant insistence that it was time to leave Afghanistan. But the lies told by US political and military officials along the way can't be brushed aside. Biden's July 8 Press Conference from the White House contained multiple lies.

Reports today indicate that the intelligence community repeatedly warned Biden what everyone knew: that the Afghan Security Forces were a joke and would collapse quickly. Listen to Biden, from the East Room of the White House, lie about that on July 8:

rumble.com/vlbl2v-the-u.s…

Just **five days** after Biden's July 8 WH press conference where he claimed the Afghan Security Forces were more powerful than the Taliban, the independent journalist @mtracey interviewed a US veteran who described how those forces were a joke and a scam

mtracey.substack.com/p/a-big-money-…

How is it possible that Michael Tracey, on July 13, could interview a US soldier who *worked on the training programs* who knew the Afghan military was just "a big money funneling operation” for US contractors & Afghan warlords and would evaporate, but Biden didn't know that?

Even worse, that the war in Afghanistan would inevitable end in failure was well-know for more than a decade. It was an open secret in Washington. Yet the government and media joined -- yet again -- to lie to the public on purpose. Read this thread:

https://twitter.com/WBardenwerper/status/1427645191238918154

There were so many lies long told by US political and military leaders about Afghanistan. But the NYT/CIA lie on Russian bounties is a perfect case study: CIA fabrications to block Trump's withdraw plan, laundered by NYT, used by pro-war Dems & neocons:

theintercept.com/2020/07/02/hou…

Biden deserves criticism for those lies and, if you want, planning inadequacies. But he (and Trump, actually) deserve a lot of praise for something more important:

Biden defied the National Security blob in DC and their media allies that crave Endless War to finally end this.

The corporate media is "liberal" in lots of ways, and especially tied to the DNC now.

But in foreign policy, they are pure militarists: they revere military leadership and the CIA and *always* favor more war and imperialism. This is illustrative:

https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1427703776496947200

The easiest path in DC - for elite political and media circles - is to continue and expand war. That's how they thrive and are deemed Credible and Serious.

Obama vowed to defy that but rarely found the courage. With the withdraw plan for Afghanistan, Trump tried & Biden did it.