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
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I find it so interesting when long-obvious truths suddenly are acknowledged in mainstream circles.
Here, in the WPost, even @TaylorLorenz (!!) admits that the hordes of #Resistance freaks and anti-Trump obsessives are as conspiratorial and deranged as what they claim QAnon is:
Here's @SohrabAhmari in the @NewStatesman on how many prominent liberals -- not anonymous Twitter trolls but major DNC donors and academics -- are deranged and drowning in moronic conspiracy theories.
@SohrabAhmari @NewStatesman Just by the way: a non-trivial sector of the Brazilian left still believes the 2018 stabbing attack on Jair Bolsonaro was fake -- despite doctor testimony, his multiple surgeries, etc. -- and now believes the same about the attack on Trump.🇧🇷
Also: US corporate media always tries to deny "journalist" status to anyone who actually does real adversarial reporting against the US Govt, rather than just doing a Natasha Bertrand of writing down what CIA orders.
Assange won multiple journalism awards around the world:👇
I urge everyone to watch the repulsive exchange between Ron Paul and Rudy Giuliani at the 2008 GOP debate Dave mentioned.
It shows how blind and repressive the Bush-Cheney-era GOP - and US - were, and still are, to core truths about our foreign policy:
That military aggression by the US and allies (Israel) will produce "blowback" -- meaning the people we bomb will hate us and want to kill us in return -- was created by the CIA!
Yet it's so taboo that TikTok was forced to censor the bin Laden letter because it discuss this.
To prosecute Hunter Biden, FBI has to say -- and has testified -- that his laptop and every document on it is authentic and unaltered.
Not one media outlet who spread the CIA's bullshit "Russian disinformation" lie has retracted it or apologized:
One more time: the people who most loudly and continuously claim that they are combatting "disinformation" are the exact people who spread it most aggressively and easily. Just look:
For weeks before the 2020 election, corporate media and CIA united to fabricate this complete lie to shield Joe Biden from incriminating reporting about his family's business activities in China and Ukraine.
This exchange alone proves what a pathological liar Fauci is.
One week after receiving emails from top epidemiologists arguing the virus was likely a lab leak, Fauci caused a virtual ban on questioning COVID's origin.
But he's a liberal folk hero so only GOP can raise this:
Before anything was known about COVID's origins, Fauci engineered a fake consensus that it was naturally occurring: in part because he had connections to the Wuhan lab.
People were banned online from questioning or debating it, until even Biden Admin admitted they don't know:👇
And just to show how cynically liberals weaponize racism:
It was decreed that "lab leak theory" was racist even though the more racist theory was theirs: that the Chinese are so unsanitary that filthy wet markets caused it.
The only thing that should have mattered was truth.