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Liz Cheney Lied About Her Role in Spreading the Discredited CIA “Russian Bounty” Story

By Glenn Greenwald

As part of her ideological war to reclaim the GOP for neocons, the now-deposed House leader falsely denied her role in a tale designed to block withdrawal from Afghanistan.

In an interview on Tuesday with Fox News’ Bret Baier, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) denied that she spread the discredited CIA “Russian bounty” story. That CIA tale, claiming Russia was paying Taliban fighters to kill U.S. troops in Afghanistan, was cooked up by the CIA and then published by The New York Times on June 27 of last year, right as former President Trump announced his plans to withdraw troops from Afghanistan. The Times story, citing anonymous intelligence officials, was then continually invoked by pro-war Republicans and Democrats — led by Cheney — to justify their blocking of that troop withdrawal. The story was discredited when the U.S. intelligence community admitted last month that it had only “low to moderate confidence” that any of this even happened.

When Baier asked Cheney about her role in spreading this debunked CIA story, Cheney blatantly lied to him, claiming “if you go back and look at what I said — every single thing I said: I said if those stories are true, we need to know why the President and Vice President were not briefed on them.” After Baier pressed her on the fact that she vested this story with credibility, Cheney insisted a second time that she never endorsed the claim but merely spoke conditionally, always using the “if these reports are true” formulation. Watch Cheney deny her role in spreading that story.

Liz Cheney, as she so often does, blatantly lied. That she merely spoke of the Russian bounty story in the conditional — “every single thing I said: I said if those stories are true” — is completely and demonstrably false. Indeed, other than Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), there are few if any members of Congress who did more to spread this Russian bounty story as proven truth, all in order to block troop withdrawal from Afghanistan. In so doing, she borrowed from a pro-war playbook pioneered by her dad, to whom she owes her career: the former Vice President would leak CIA claims to The New York Times to justify war, then go on Meet the Press with Tim Russert, as he did on September 8, 2002, and cite those New York Times reports as though they were independent confirmation of his views coming from that paper rather than from him:

MR. RUSSERT: What, specifically, has [Saddam] obtained that you believe would enhance his nuclear development program? …..

VICE PRES. CHENEY: Now, in the case of a nuclear weapon, that means either plutonium or highly enriched uranium. And what we’ve seen recently that has raised our level of concern to the current state of unrest, if you will, if I can put it in those terms, is that he now is trying, through his illicit procurement network, to acquire the equipment he needs to be able to enrich uranium to make the bombs.

MR. RUSSERT: Aluminum tubes.

VICE PRES. CHENEY: Specifically aluminum tubes. There’s a story in The New York Times this morning this is — I don’t — and I want to attribute The Times. I don’t want to talk about, obviously, specific intelligence sources, but it’s now public that, in fact, [Saddam] has been seeking to acquire, and we have been able to intercept and prevent him from acquiring through this particular channel, the kinds of tubes that are necessary to build a centrifuge. And the centrifuge is required to take low-grade uranium and enhance it into highly enriched uranium, which is what you have to have in order to build a bomb.

So having CIA stories leak to the press that fuel the pro-war case, then having pro-war politicians cite those to justify their pro-war position, is a Cheney Family speciality. MORE.

10 Things We Have Learned During the Covid Coup

Via Off-Guardian

One potential positive from the whole Covid-19 debacle is that we have learned an incredible amount about the society in which we live. This will be crucial if we manage to stave off a descent into a nightmare future of techno-fascist slavery.

We will have a new understanding of what our world has become and what we would like it to be in the decades and centuries to come. And “we” means we. While the majority have, apparently, learnt nothing at all from what has happened, they will eventually catch up.

There is no way that knowledge gained by a wide-awake 15% or 20% of the population will not end up being shared by almost everyone. Once the truth is out, it tends to stay out. As H.R. Haldeman so wisely put it, “you can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube”.

Here are Ten Things We Have Learned During the Covid Coup.

1. Our political system is hopelessly corrupt.

Virtually all politicians are hopelessly corrupt. No political party can be trusted. They all can be, and have been, bought.

2. Democracy is a sham.

It has been a sham for a very long time. There will never be any real democracy when money and power amount to the same thing.

3. The system will stop at nothing to hold on to its power and, if possible, increase its levels of control and exploitation.

It has no scruples. No lie is too outrageous, no hypocrisy too nauseating, no human sacrifice too great.

4. So-called radical movements are usually nothing of the sort.

From whatever direction they claim to attack the system, they are just pretending to do so, and serve to channel discontent in directions which are harmless to the power clique and even useful to its agendas.

5. Any “dissident” voice you have ever heard of through corporate media is probably a fake.

The system does not hand out free publicity to its actual enemies.

6. Most people in our society are cowards.

They will jettison all the fine values and principles which they have been loudly boasting about all their lives merely to avoid the slightest chance of public criticism, inconvenience or even minor financial loss.

7. The mainstream media is nothing but a propaganda machine for the system…

…and those journalists who work for it have sold their sorry souls, placing their (often minimal) writing skills entirely at the disposition of Power.

8. Police are not servants of the public…

…but servants of a powerful and extremely wealthy minority which seeks to control and exploit the public for its own narrow and greedy interests.

9. Scientists cannot be trusted.

They will use the hypnotic power of their white coats and authoritative status for the benefit of whoever funds their work and lifestyle. He who pays the piper calls the tune.

10. Progress is a misleading illusion.

The “progress” of increasing automation and industrialization does not go hand in hand with a progress in the quality of human life, but in fact will “progressively” reduce it to the point of complete extinction. MORE.

A Timeline of “The Great Reset” Agenda

Via Global Research

How the great reset ideology pitched its tent in the ‘new normal’ camp.

Say it’s 2014 and you’ve had this idea for a technocratic Great Reset of the world economy for some time now, but it only works if the entire planet is rocked by a pandemic. How do you go about selling your idea?

“The pandemic represents a rare but narrow window of opportunity to reflect, reimagine, and reset our world to create a healthier, more equitable, and more prosperous future” — Klaus Schwab, WEF

If you are World Economic Forum (WEF) Founder Klaus Schwab, you attempt to sell your vision of a global Utopia via a Great Reset of the world order in three simple steps:

1. Announce your intention to revamp every aspect of society with global governance, and keep repeating that message
2. When your message isn’t getting through, simulate fake pandemic scenarios that show why the world needs a great reset
3. If the fake pandemic scenarios aren’t persuasive enough, wait a couple months for a real global crisis to occur, and repeat step one

It took Schwab and the Davos elite about six years to watch their great reset ideology grow from a tiny Swiss seed in 2014 to a European super-flower pollinating the entire globe in 2020.

The so-called “Great Reset” promises to build “a more secure, more equal, and more stable world” if everyone on the planet agrees to “act jointly and swiftly to revamp all aspects of our societies and economies, from education to social contracts and working conditions.”

But it wouldn’t have been possible to contemplate materializing such an all-encompassing plan for a new world order without a global crisis, be it manufactured or of unfortunate happenstance, that shocked society to its core.

“In the end, the outcome was tragic: the most catastrophic pandemic in history with hundreds of millions of deaths, economic collapse and societal upheaval” — Clade X pandemic simulation (May, 2018)

So, in May, 2018, the WEF partnered with Johns Hopkins to simulate a fictitious pandemic — dubbed “Clade X” —  to see how prepared the world be if ever faced with such a crisis.

A little over a year later, the WEF once again teamed-up with Johns Hopkins, along with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, to stage another pandemic exercise called Event 201 in October, 2019.

Both simulations concluded that the world wasn’t prepared for a global pandemic.

And a few short months following the conclusion of Event 201, which specifically simulated a coronavirus outbreak, the World Health Organization (WHO) officially declared that the coronavirus had reached pandemic status on March 11, 2020.

Oops! AP Reporter Forgets To Remove Hamas Headband Before Going Live

Via The Babylon Bee

GAZA—In an embarrassing blunder on camera, a Middle East reporter for the Associated Press Forgot to remove his green Hamas headband and ski mask before going live to cover Israel’s latest airstrike.

“This is a shocking war crime,” said AP’s foreign correspondent Mohammed Ahmed Mohammed Mohammed. “Israel is now blatantly attacking journalists. Behind me is the building that was our Gaza bureau of operations before the evil Jews demolished it. Death to Israel. Allahu Akbar.”

The journalist quickly caught himself and realized he was still wearing his terrorist headgear before frantically ducking out of frame.

“Sorry folks, technical difficulties. As I was saying, Israel and its supporters in the United States have a lot to answer for in the deliberate targeting of the free press.”

He then tried to cut the feed but pressed the wrong button and blew himself up.

Check out all of the Bee’s takes on a world gone mad HERE.

Be sure to stop by at Def-Con News to get our morning started off right.