Government and news orgs openly lie to us, about Russia-Ukraine

Photo by Jorge Franganillo on Unsplash

President Trump had received much criticism for his accusations of “fake news” against the media. Source.

Now, from an NBC News article: 

- “It was an attention-grabbing assertion that made headlines around the world: U.S. officials said they had indications suggesting Russia might be preparing to use chemical agents in Ukraine. President Joe Biden later said it publicly. But three U.S. officials told NBC News this week there is no evidence Russia has brought any chemical weapons near Ukraine. They said the U.S. released the information to deter Russia from using the banned munitions. It’s one of a string of examples of the Biden administration’s breaking with recent precedent by deploying declassified intelligence as part of an information war against Russia. The administration has done so even when the intelligence wasn’t rock solid, officials said, to keep Russian President Vladimir Putin off balance.”

- “Multiple U.S. officials acknowledged that the U.S. has used information as a weapon even when confidence in the accuracy of the information wasn’t high. Sometimes it has used low-confidence intelligence for deterrent effect, as with chemical agents”.  

- “Before the invasion, the U.S. asserted that Russia intended to stage a false flag attack against members of Ukraine’s Russian-speaking population as a justification for war and that the plans included a video featuring fake corpses. The video never materialized”. 

- “At times, the Biden administration has released information in which it has less confidence or about things that are possible rather than truly likely. Last week, U.S. officials told reporters they had intelligence suggesting Putin is being misled by his own advisers, who are afraid to tell him the truth. But when Biden was asked about the disclosure later in the day — after it made headlines around the globe — he was less than definitive. … The degree to which Putin is isolated or relying on flawed information can’t be verified, said Paul Pillar, a retired career U.S. intelligence officer. … Two U.S. officials said the intelligence about whether Putin’s inner circle was lying to him wasn’t conclusive — based more on analysis than hard evidence.” 

- “Likewise, a charge that Russia had turned to China for potential military help lacked hard evidence, a European official and two U.S. officials said.” Source.

Okay then.

Note: A little extra for the inquisitive. Perhaps you could relate this to our previous reporting on the Hunter Biden laptop scandal. Or the weapons of mass destruction as justification for starting the Iraq War. Or on many aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Or any other time we reported on what government and media authorities declared to be conspiracy theories, only for them to be later confirmed as truth.