Military Whistleblower Exposes Australian War Crimes in Afghanistan

In this video, acTVism Munich speaks with former Australian Defense Force (AFD) lawyer David McBride. After serving in the AFD for several years, McBride blew the whistle on war crimes taking place in Afghanistan. After exhausting all options, McBride leaked classified material to the ABC. ABC journalists wrote a story called The Afghan Leaks about the material provided. Additionally, McBride speaks about the recently released Brereton Report which sheds further light on war crimes in Afghanistan.

How To Pressure Donald Trump Into Staying At War

It’s easy:

While Trump has repeatedly voiced his desire to bring troops home before Election Day, various defense officials and confidants on the Hill and in GOP circles have repeatedly insisted to Trump that such large-scale withdrawals would risk creating an election-year mess that would dwarf the fallout that came after President Barack Obama’s troop withdrawal from Iraq, two of the sources said.

It’s a strategy of “scaring the shit out of the president,” as one former senior Trump administration official characterized it. It plays on his fears of possibly getting tagged as “weak” like Obama was. Trumpworld and Republican hawks have used the stratagem to great success in earlier years of this administration. The tactic helped convince Trump to embrace the Afghanistan surge of summer 2017, and got him to quickly back off withdrawals from Syria in both 2018 and 2019. About 900 troops will remain in Syria, a number unchanged by the Iraq drawdown.

Which is why the headline is essentially correct: Trump’s Troop Withdrawal Is a ‘Disingenuous’ Election Year Ploy, Officials Say

NYT Still Joking Around About Dead Americans in Afghanistan

Do they have editors at this paper anymore, or it’s all just pre-packaged in Langley?

In an article about three marines who should have never been in Afghanistan in the first place getting killed there in a suicide truck bombing last year, they 1 try to push their Russian bounties hoax some more, while 2 admitting that they’ve got no case to make even though this is their 9th or 10th article in a series on this obvious lie:

“American intelligence agencies are investigating whether that car bomb was detonated at the behest of a Russian military agency paying bounties to Afghan militia groups for killing American troops. Such a possibility, if true, would be a staggering repudiation of Mr. Trump’s yearslong embrace of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. Thus far, there is no conclusive evidence linking the deaths to any kind of Russian bounty.”

Yeah, yeah. “If true”; the story of the last four years of Russiagate lies in two words.

They then helpfully remind us:

The investigation into the deaths of the three Marines continues. Although Mr. Trump has dismissed the suspected Russian payments as “fake news,” Congress has begun hearings into the matter. Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that while the government so far lacks proof that any Russian bounties caused specific military casualties, “we are still looking.”

As that famous liar Donald Rumsfeld said about Iraq’s unconventional weapons, “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” Good enough for the newspaper of record, of course.

Cross-posted at the Institute.