Politics And Current Events

[Kaiser]

They're humans. They probably never imagined this scenario when they bought that gaudy eyesore.

[offsides]

Thank goodness I live in a cheap-o suburban community where the only protesting done is dogs barking.

[MR25]

[MalkinIsMyHomeboy]

SKIN THAT SMOKEWAGON AND SEE WHAT HAPPENS

[shafnutz05]

It looks like these protesters smashed the back of the window out in the police car and had it completely surrounded. Aren't weapons normally kept back there?

I dunno man... This is a tough one imo. Seems like a case of plant grow.

[eddy]

[Freddy Rumsen]

Well, apparently the couple did.

Ok nobody

[nocera]

My first question would be how the hell did a cop car end up inside of the protest? Police here have been kept at such a distance to where they’re able to block off roads safely but also not interfere with the march. I don’t know if the windows were smashed to where the cop would feel threatened, but that situation never should have happened.

[King Colby]

I'm starting to think that STL thing was staged, who the F wears their country club's finest in their own home?

[Kaiser]

I'm starting to think that STL thing was staged, who the F wears their country club's finest in their own home?

Carter Pewterschmitt and this guy.

[willeyeam]

To be fair his home is a country club

[King Colby]

He looks like hes on his way to drink too much white wine at the club's annual lobster dinner

[Morkle]

https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/29/politics ... index.html

The intelligence that assessed there was an effort by a Russian military intelligence unit to pay the Taliban to kill US soldiers was included in one of President Donald Trump's daily briefings on intelligence matters sometime in the spring, according to a US official with direct knowledge of the latest information.

That assessment, the source said, was backed up by "several pieces of information" that supported the view that there was an effort by the Russian intelligence unit -- the GRU -- to pay bounties to kill US soldiers, including interrogation of Taliban detainees and electronic eavesdropping. The source said there was some other information that did not corroborate this view but said, nonetheless, '"This was a big deal. When it's about US troops you go after it 100%, with everything you got."
Trump is not known to fully or regularly read the President's Daily Brief, something that is well-known within the White House.

The information was serious enough the National Security Council staff held a meeting during the spring to discuss "possible response options," including sanctions, if the intelligence developed to the point it was deemed ready to take to the President for any possible action, the official said.

Pressed on Monday whether the information was included in the President's Daily Brief -- the written document that includes the intelligence community's more important and urgent information -- White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said only that Trump "was not personally briefed."

[Dickie Dunn]

So it was included in the thing that he doesn’t bother to read?

[Morkle]

So it was included in the thing that he doesn’t bother to read?

Seems like it, and "personally briefed" isn't an excuse. Dude's just too lazy to read the daily briefs I guess.

[faftorial]

So it was included in the thing that he doesn’t bother to read?

No, and they were afraid to raise the issue with him (allegedly).

Image without a caption
Opinion by
David Ignatius
Columnist
June 29, 2020 at 7:21 p.m. EDT

A basic truth about Russian President Vladimir Putin, which President Trump evidently doesn’t understand: Putin is in the payback business. He believes the United States destroyed his former country, the Soviet Union. He likes the United States to feel pain, in Afghanistan and everywhere else.

Trump has his own, much rosier take on Putin. And I can’t help wondering whether that explains why, assuming his account is true, the American president was never briefed about intelligence reports early this year that Russia was offering bounties to Taliban fighters to kill U.S. and coalition troops in Afghanistan. Perhaps Trump’s national security aides were afraid to upset him.

When it comes to the military, Trump has the opposite of a Midas touch. Everything he handles becomes tarnished. That was true of his meddling last year in the discipline case of Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher; his encouragement of the firing Capt. Brett Crozier as skipper of the USS Theodore Roosevelt; and his enlistment of Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, for a publicity stunt at St. John’s Episcopal Church near the White House.

There’s a lot we still don’t know about the Russian bounties in Afghanistan. But sources have provided some basics that allow us to see this incident in context.

First, we must understand that the Russians wish us ill in Afghanistan. Putin’s generation remains bitter about their forced withdrawal that finished in 1989, under American pressure, which presaged the collapse of the Soviet Union. There’s a tiny Afghan War Museum in Moscow’s Perovo district: two dark rooms, pictures of the fallen, guns, maps and other trinkets of a war that broke the Soviet Union’s spirit.

About 15,000 Soviet soldiers were killed in their nine-year Afghanistan war. By comparison, the United States has suffered 2,372 military deaths in our Afghan war, waged for more than twice as long.

What makes Afghanistan especially painful for Russia is that the Soviet Union’s final defeat resulted from a secret CIA program to supply the Afghan mujahideen with Stinger antiaircraft missiles, which could shoot down Soviet helicopters and were a death sentence for Moscow’s recruits.

The Soviet Union might have hoped that the United States would help it escape the Afghan quagmire, but life doesn’t work that way. A declassified Feb. 13, 1989, National Security Directive specified that if the Soviets wanted a cutoff in U.S. assistance to the mujahideen, the United States “should take no action limiting U.S. options” until the Moscow-backed Afghan government fell.

For the first 15 years of the U.S. war in Afghanistan, in which our former allies were now mortal enemies, the Russians played along. They were happy to let Americans kill the same Islamist militants that had used U.S.-supplied weapons to kill Russians. But starting in 2018, U.S. commanders noticed a difference: The Russians appeared to be helping the Taliban.

Gen. John “Mick” Nicholson Jr., who commanded U.S. forces in Afghanistan for more than two years, revealed the secret Russian aid for the Taliban in a March 23, 2018, interview with the BBC. He said Afghan leaders had showed U.S. commanders Russian-supplied weapons that had been smuggled across the border to Taliban fighters. He said the Russians were also peddling a false narrative that the United States was fostering a buildup of Islamic State fighters in Afghanistan, to justify their actions.

Nicholson’s 2018 interview was a rare public protest by a U.S. official. Trump didn’t press the Russians to stop, and so they continued. The GRU military-intelligence units that were helping smuggle weapons to the Taliban in 2018 may have been the forerunners of GRU operatives who U.S. intelligence analysts suspect are the new bounty hunters.

Through this January and February, as the CIA and military surveillance gathered reports about a cash stockpile in northern Afghanistan and other indicators of a possible Russian operation, U.S. military and intelligence officials became increasingly concerned, several told me. By March, they were pressing for a top-level review by senior Trump administration officials of this still-unconfirmed threat to U.S. soldiers.

Through this agonizing period, Trump kept up a buzz of happy talk about improving relations with Putin, including the possibility of inviting him back into the Group of Seven. Were Trump’s commanders too afraid to warn him off this folly?

Trump isn’t the only one who knows too little about Afghanistan. Our forces there are so hunkered down, I’m told the military hasn’t allowed any significant embeds by journalists. Gen. Austin “Scott” Miller, the admirable commanding general, avoids briefing the press or Congress, perhaps for fear of unintentionally offending the White House.

Trump is an obstacle to good policy. Either people don’t tell him the truth, or he doesn’t want to hear it. Whichever way, he’s defaulting on his most basic responsibility as commander in chief.

[NAN]

My first question would be how the hell did a cop car end up inside of the protest? Police here have been kept at such a distance to where they’re able to block off roads safely but also not interfere with the march. I don’t know if the windows were smashed to where the cop would feel threatened, but that situation never should have happened.

Always the cops fault.

[eddy]

So it was included in the thing that he doesn’t bother to read?

Seems like it, and "personally briefed" isn't an excuse. Dude's just too lazy to read the daily briefs I guess.

Our president is a gigantic human piece of ****

[Freddy Rumsen]

This hilarious. Whose paying for these hit pieces on Dollar General?

Dollar Tree?

[Kraftster]

#DarkHorseDuo 2020. Who’s down with it!

Rebranded #Unity2020. Let’s do it.

[faftorial]

This hilarious. Whose paying for these hit pieces on Dollar General?

Dollar Tree?

Maybe they have shady business practices?

[RonnieFranchise]

#DarkHorseDuo 2020. Who’s down with it!

Rebranded #Unity2020. Let’s do it.

Good idea but I am blanking out on who the candidates would be.

[nocera]

My first question would be how the hell did a cop car end up inside of the protest? Police here have been kept at such a distance to where they’re able to block off roads safely but also not interfere with the march. I don’t know if the windows were smashed to where the cop would feel threatened, but that situation never should have happened.

Always the cops fault.

Always the protestors fault.

Also didn’t blame anybody there. I asked how that situation even happened.

[NAN]

My first question would be how the hell did a cop car end up inside of the protest? Police here have been kept at such a distance to where they’re able to block off roads safely but also not interfere with the march. I don’t know if the windows were smashed to where the cop would feel threatened, but that situation never should have happened.

Always the cops fault.

Always the protestors fault.

Also didn’t blame anybody there. I asked how that situation even happened.

Considering they surrounded the vehicle and broke out the back window, this one is on them.

[nocera]

My first question would be how the hell did a cop car end up inside of the protest? Police here have been kept at such a distance to where they’re able to block off roads safely but also not interfere with the march. I don’t know if the windows were smashed to where the cop would feel threatened, but that situation never should have happened.

Always the cops fault.

Always the protestors fault.

Also didn’t blame anybody there. I asked how that situation even happened.

Considering they surrounded the vehicle and broke out the back window, this one is on them.

Okay cool. My question still stands.