NYT: Russians paid Afghans to kill American troops

[Dill]

(06-30-2020, 12:16 PM)GMDino Wrote: ". . . admitting the underlying intelligence was conflicting. . . All NYT/Russia reporting has been based on 'conflicting' intelligence--also known as wishful thinking."

Important to note: From inside the intel community, one could say that almost 100% of intel findings can be represented as "conflicting" with some sources and other intel assessments.

Also important--"conflicts" are not necessarily, or even not often, between equally credible sources/assessments. Those who receive and process raw intel to create the products upon which policy recommendations are based must constantly make judgement calls about the relative "confidence level" of intel products. This can be accurately represented as a "science." Sometimes the calls are tough and risky; other times they are not because the "conflicting" source is simply not credible, or very much less so. (E.g., Putin denies the bounty story. Should that "conflicting source" trump US intel reports?)

In this case, there is no reason to suppose "conflicting intelligence" disqualifies a NYT report when the veracity of the bounty report was accepted across the intel community, drawing from multiple sources and vetting/synthesizing through multiple stages. That's one reason why other news sources can confirm it.

When a commentator pulls out that word "conflicting" to leverage doubt about the "fake news" report, he is hoping that voter's lack of knowledge about the process will lead them to suppose the NYT report was one-sided and "jumped the gun" out of eagerness to say something bad about Trump. Another "unnamed source" scandal, no more credible to the Fox audience than yet another woman accusing Trump of rape.  He said/she said.

At the propaganda level, it will be worth noting if this report can, for Trump's base, be successfully converted to another "lie" about Trump, as were the impeachment charges of abuse of power and obstruction.