Thread by @ggreenwald

The Pentagon's Lies About the August 29 Drone Strikes Were Spread For Days By An Unquestioning Media

Over and over, US security services lie and corporate media spread them uncritically. This is a particularly vivid case. Watch:

rumble.com/vmncz9-the-pen…

It's hard to overstate how common this behavior is. I'm not speaking here with 20/20 hindsight now that the Pentagon admits its story was false. I published a video on August 30 - one day after - criticizing the media for its complete lack of skepticism about these drones strikes

The only reason the Pentagon was forced to admit its drone strike story was false is all eyes were on Kabul, which enabled the NYT's superb investigation proving the story was false. But usually, the same thing happens and they don't get caught - thanks to media stenographers.

Several points about the above video report on how the Biden Admin lied about the Aug. 29 drone strike and was helped by uncritical media endorsing the false claim that they killed ISIS terrorists - until the NYT's Sept 10 great exposé.

First, there's no doubt the Pentagon lied:

Second, until the NYT's report 2 weeks later, media repeatedly and unquestioningly spread the Biden Admin's false story that the drone strike killed ISIS terrorists headed to the airport with bombs, and that this caused "secondary explosions." This dominated news for 2 weeks:

Beyond that, the fact that a rarity happened here -- not that the Pentagon lied but that it got caught lying -- is almost secondary. The point is that this media practice -- of publishing US Govt claims about who they killed with drone strikes *with zero skepticism* -- is common.

In the two weeks after the Aug. 29 drone strike, so many journalists endorsed the Biden WH's claim that they killed ISIS terrorist, even though there was *zero evidence* for it. You can watch them here. What happened to the Trump-era skepticism of pointing out "no evidence"??

The NYT, as I discuss here, deserves ample credit for exposing this lie. But it was an aberration because of the attention on Kabul. Since Obama's heavy use of drones, they've been wiping out entire families, then lying about it. Don't let the criminality of that be forgotten:

The truth here is as clear as it is ugly: after the attack on Kabul airport, the Biden WH was desperate to change the news cycle, eager to give its friendly journalists a way to depict Biden as "tough," so they extinguished 10 innocent lives with total recklessness, then lied.

Here's Gen. Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, telling multiple lies on September 1 about the August 29 US drone strike in Afghanistan, on his way to heralding it as a "righteous strike" (it wiped out an entire family and killed no terrorists). #Righteous