It is just mindboggling to me that Trump can say with a straight face that he knew nothing about the intelligence that Russia was paying Taliban fighters to kill American soldiers. There are only two plausible explanations for this: 1) Trump is lying (which we all know is not beyond the realm of possibility) or 2) the Intel community failed to pass along such information to the Commander in Chief. Either option shows that there is a major problem in this administration.
If Trump is not lying and he really didn’t know anything about this, heads should roll. People should be fired and there should be a major investigation as to why such critical intelligence never reached the top. On the other hand, if the intelligence was briefed to Trump (and the reporting is that is exactly what happened) and he is now lying about it, that’s even worse. Putin knows the truth and here is the president of the United States, on television, lying to the American people!! What the hell?
Intelligence is almost always somewhat hazy – that’s the nature of intelligence!! Obama launched a raid to kill Bin Laden when the intelligence community did not have 100% confidence that he was at the targeted location! And if Trump heard about this Russian bounty campaign even tangentially, you would think he would order the agencies to jump on it and get more intel to confirm or refute it. Ignoring it is nothing short of criminal!!
If this reporting is true and the United States has not taken any punitive measures against Russia, that seems to send a pretty clear signal to Putin that he can do whatever the hell he wants – even at the cost of American lives – and there will be no consequences. The US has a whole menu of options available to us – financial sanctions, diplomatic options, and, of course, physical options. But to do nothing???
This reminds me of a previous incident that Bolton addresses in his book. Iran shot down a US Global Hawk drone, which is a very expensive and very capable high-flying unmanned surveillance aircraft. The US agencies and the military discussed retaliatory measures and came up with a plan to launch a strike against limited military targets in Iran. Trump bought in to this plan and everything was set in motion. Less than two hours before this strike was due to launch, Trump called it off much to the frustration and surprise, and completely counter to the advice, of everyone involved.
This continued pattern of letting our adversaries attack US assets and personnel without any consequences is sure as hell not making America safer!! Putin continues to act with impunity; Kim Jong Un continues to develop his nuclear program; Iran continues to be a threat; the Saudis butcher a journalist and Trump only wants to close an arms deal with them. Trump continues along with no clear international strategy, alienating our allies and letting our adversaries get away with, in some cases, murder!
Carl Berstein wrote an article about Trump’s interactions with foreign leaders based upon his sources in the government (and I’m sure Richard Nixon would agree that he likely has some pretty good sources!) that continues to paint a very grim picture of exactly how dangerous this president is to the national security of this country. I have included the link below. At the end of this post.
I can just see it now – Trump standing on the bridge of the Titanic saying, “No one told me about any icebergs!”
https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/29/politics/trump-phone-calls-national-security-concerns/index.html
Just like the Titanic. I believe he is about to sink.