New York Times calls for punishing Putin over anonymous bounty claims but advised Trump to let ISIS kill Russian troops in Syria
1 Jul, 2020 19:13 / Updated 5 hours ago
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New York Times calls for punishing Putin over anonymous bounty claims but advised Trump to let ISIS kill Russian troops in Syria
File photo © REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton
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The same New York Times reporting anonymous claims of Russian bounties on US troops in Afghanistan opined in 2017 that President Trump should let ISIS “bleed” Russian forces in Syria rather than help defeat the terrorists.
Thomas Friedman, who has won three Pulitzer prizes as a journalist and columnist for the Times, argued in an April 2017 column that the US should “back off” fighting ISIS in Syria because the terrorist group “plays as dirty as Iran and Russia” and would prevent government forces from crushing “moderate rebels” in the country.
“This is a time for Trump to be Trump – utterly cynical and unpredictable,” Friedman wrote.
Friedman likened such a strategy to US policy during the 1979-1989 Soviet-Afghan war, when Washington backed Islamist fighters – including Osama bin Laden – to kill Soviet forces and prolong the fighting. As for Syria, he wrote, “Everyone there plays dirty, deviously and without mercy. Where’s that Trump when we need him?”
The Times now cites anonymous intelligence sources as saying Russia targeted US and coalition troops in Afghanistan by offering bounties to kill them. The allegations are being used as the latest line of attack against Trump by the mainstream media, which has accused the president of failing to take action against Russia, even though the claims haven’t been verified.
Trump has denied the Times’ allegations, going as far as to say in a tweet on Wednesday that the bounty stories are “just another hoax” to make him look bad and that the “secret source probably does not even exist.”