Day 425
Unless The Washington Post publishes in solidum the classified U.S. intelligence briefs it refers to we might consider disregarding the write-ups altogether1.
Obviously, not. WAPO continues rolling out their own interpretations and interpolations of classified reports. Now no one wants to talk to them, at least not in Ukraine.
Tweets Mykhailo Podoliak, deputy head of the President’s Office, ostensibly in reply:
Shane is from The Daily Beast via WSJ. Isabelle specialized in sports before WAPO bundled her off to Moscow in 2014. Both fail the Palianytsia Test. Miserably. Current and previous scoops about Ukraine explain why.
Remember this from one year before the all-out invasion?
Why close allies of Zelensky have suddenly decided to open up about one of the longest-running dramas from the Trump era — the blitz of meetings, messages and public statements by Russia’s agents of influence in Ukraine — is a mystery. The Washington Post’s David Stern got the ball rolling on January 30, 2021 in an article, titled “Ukraine stayed quiet during Trump-era pressures. Now it’s sharing some Giuliani tales.”
This is the same David Stern who teamed up with Kenneth Vogel in January 2017 to write about how Ukraine interfered in the the 2016 U.S. presidential election against Trump. And this is the same David Stern who a month later helped whitewash the release of more than 280,000 text messages written by the daughter of Trump’s 2016 election campaign manager Paul Manafort2.
What is wrong with WAPO flaks?
Even David Ignatius, the newspaper’s foreign policy opinionator on Ukraine, appears clueless.
Reading about what people think about the war you are in is annoying, because most already discredited themselves too often to take seriously. Non-predictive intelligence floppery has been а hallmark of this bloody mess, thanks in part to the clowns at WAPO, ISW and Rand, where expertise is, er, lacking3.
Realities We Don’t See. More WAPO crap (February 10, 2021)
Ignore Analysts. Stay away from experts (June 18, 2022)