Dear CCI Followers,
Speaking of “First-Response Rumors being Powerful,” that I mentioned in my email yesterday, an additional report came out saying that the “American Public already believes that Russia gave Taliban Bounties to kill American soldiers; hence, the American public is ready to apply additional sanctions on Russia.
Below, we have a U.S. General in Afghanistan saying that basically there is no direct evidence, except that the Taliban had a lot of cash. Yes, the Taliban has a lot of cash because they openly plant and sell millions of dollars worth of poppy seeds (for heroin production) to the world market, much of which goes to the U.S. … so, yes, they have lots of cash as a result.
Apparently Bounty-Gate isn’t over yet; well, maybe it is… but one never knows.
The top General in Afghanistan, Kenneth McKenzie, just made a pronouncement that he “doubts that a Russian Bounty Program killed U.S. Troops in Afghanistan. He says “more information is needed.”
Next he says, “I just didn’t find a causal link,” after that … ‘The Intel (intelligence) case wasn’t proved to me — it wasn’t proved enough that I’d take it to a court of law. You see a lot of indicators, many of them are troubling, many of them you act on. But, in this case there just wasn’t enough there, so I sent the intelligence guys back to continue to dig on it, and I believe they’re continuing to dig right now, but I just didn’t see enough there to tell me that the circuit was closed in that regard.”The report went on for eleven paragraphs, finally saying: “Reports of this nature have been out there for a while, but had very, very low levels of authenticity about them. And so you just continue to plow through them, sort of as you go forward.”
Sharon Tennison
Center for Citizen Initiatives
Top general has doubts Russian bounty program killed US troops in Afghanistan
The top U.S. general in the Middle East said more information was needed.
July 7, 2020
By Luis Martinez
The top U.S. general in the Middle East said Tuesday he was aware of the intelligence of a Russian bounty program targeting U.S. troops in Afghanistan, but while he said he found it “worrisome,” he said he did not believe it was tied to actual U.S. military deaths on the battlefield.
“I found it very worrisome, I just didn’t find that there was a causative link there,” Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, the commander of U.S. Central Command, said in an interview with a small number of reporters.
‘The intel (intelligence) case wasn’t proved to me — it wasn’t proved enough that I’d take it to a court of law — and you know that’s often true in battlefield intelligence,” said McKenzie.