The war rhetoric against Russia over Ukraine keeps getting ratcheted up. We have representatives of the US government making all manner of allegations about the threatening actions by Russia, including that they are planning false flag operations and crisis actors to provoke an invasion (as if Russia taking its cues from Alex Jones) without providing any shred of evidence.

In an exchange with State Department spokesperson Ned Price, AP reporter Mike Lee presses him to provide more than assertions and reminds him about WMDs in Iraq where similar US government assertions that they had solid evidence turned out to be flat-out lies meant to serve propaganda purposes and lay the groundwork for the invasion of that country.

Watch this exchange as Lee presses Price to provide any evidence at all only to be told by Price that him merely asserting something should be all the evidence that is necessary. Lee reminds him about the Iraq lies.

WATCH: Heated exchange between @APDiploWriter Matt Lee and @StateDeptSpox Ned Price on declassified information. pic.twitter.com/8TFJdSW4M6

— CSPAN (@cspan) February 3, 2022

More reporters should follow Lee’s lead and demand that the public be given more than their “Trust us. We know but can’t tell you” rubbish.

And just like back in 2003 when anyone who questioned the Bush-Cheney administration’s false claims were portrayed as sympathizers of Saddam Hussein, Biden’s White House spokesperson Jen Psaki and Price are once again adopting the despicable tactic that anyone who dares to question their assertions about Russia or the recent attack on the ISIS leader and asks for evidence are sympathizers of America’s enemies.

At a State Department briefing on Thursday, reporters pressed Price for evidence to support the claim that Russia plans to fake an attack on its own forces as a pretext to invade Ukraine. Price insisted that the need to protect intelligence sources and methods prevented his sharing of more details. Fair enough. But he also told the AP’s veteran diplomatic reporter Matt Lee: “If you doubt the credibility of the US government, of the British government, of other governments and want to, you know, find solace in information the Russians are putting out, that is for you to do.”

Psaki seemed to follow a similar logic when reporters aboard Air Force One demanded evidence to support the administration’s account of the US Special Operations mission Wednesday, which killed the reputed leader of the Islamic State. Specifically, NPR White House correspondent Ayesha Rascoe sought more details to bolster President Biden’s claim that it was a suicide bomb detonated by ISIS leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, and not American munitions, that killed al-Qurayshi’s wife and their two children. 

“There may be people that are skeptical of the events that took place and what happened to the civilians,” Rascoe explained. Psaki responded, in part, by asking Rascoe whether those people think the military is “not providing accurate information…and ISIS is providing accurate information?”

Psaki did note, too, that the Defense Department has a process for reviewing civilian deaths, which was underway, and that the White House would release all the details it can. But that doesn’t get her off the hook. The military has routinely lied to the public about its track record, dating back long before the war in Vietnam and the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. Eric Schlosser revealed in his 2013 book Command and Control, for example, how the Air Force lied outrageously to cover up nuclear blunders that put innocent civilians, including Americans, in terrible danger. In Afghanistan and in Syria, just during the last few years, the military has killed civilians and misrepresented what took place.

How many times within just the last two decades of fighting have we had claims by the US military that they hit only military targets only for it to be quietly revealed later that many innocent civilians were killed? The drone strike on an Afghan family on August 29th is merely the most recent example, with the father initially being portrayed as a terrorist but in reality worked for an NGO.

The Pentagon said it would not punish the military team behind the errant drone strike that was intended to hit the masterminds of an attack on the Kabul airport but instead killed 10 civilians, including seven children.
…

The counterterror strike in Afghanistan came in the final days of the chaotic U.S. and NATO pullout from the country.

The Pentagon initially claimed the counterterror strike had killed an Islamic extremist who was plotting an imminent attack. It was just days after 13 U.S. service members were killed outside of the Kabul airport by suicide bomber. At the time, officials said, intelligence information indicated a white Toyota was carrying a car bomb. Officials surveilled the car and its driver as he made several suspicious stops near the airport, placing what looked like gas canisters in the car. In all, they watched for approximately eight hours before striking it with a 20-pound Hellfire missile from a drone.

But, the man in the car was not an extremist terrorist. He was Zemari Ahmadi, an aid worker with a group called Nutrition and Education International, who had been transporting water. The explosion of the car, parked in a courtyard of a home, killed Ahmadi, as well as seven children and two other adults.

But before any of those details were uncovered, Gen. Mark Milley justified the bombing, saying, “the procedures were correctly followed and it was a righteous strike.”

It wasn’t until The New York Times uncovered video footage that challenged the Pentagon’s narrative that officials admitted the strike had been a mistake.

The US government and military, irrespective of which party is in power, has a very long and well-documented history of brazenly and knowingly lying to advance its propaganda goals. The technique of smearing those who have the temerity to challenge its assertions is also long-established and done by both parties, as is the practice of no one being punished for lying or killing innocent people. Who says that bipartisanship is dead?