US invaded Iraq in 2003 because Iraq had "weapons of mass destruction". Except Iraq didn't have them. Once the lie had served its purpose the US admitted as much, but dodged responsibility by redacting the story: Iraq had been pretending it had WMDs! No way was the US smearing and invading the country based on that smear actually America's fault.

Well neither is falsely accusing Russia of getting its Manchurian candidate into the White House. Because while KGB doesn't actually have tons of blackmail material on him Russia pretended it did. Take it over Wall Street Journal:

There is a third possibility, namely that the dossier was part of a Russian espionage disinformation plot targeting both parties and America's political process. This is what seems most likely to me, having spent much of my 30-year government career, including with the CIA, observing Soviet and then Russian intelligence operations. If there is one thing I have learned, it's that Vladimir Putin continues in the Soviet tradition of using disinformation and espionage as foreign-policy tools.

...

The pattern of such Russian operations is to sprinkle false information, designed to degrade the enemy's social and political infrastructure, among true statements that enhance the veracity of the overall report.

The ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee was the victim of a prank phone call by Russian comedians who offered to give him 'compromising' dirt on Donald Trump - including nude photos of the president and a Russian reality show star.

DailyMail.com can disclose that after the prank, his staff engaged in correspondence with what they thought was a Ukrainian politician to try to obtain the 'classified' material promised on the call.

On an audio recording of the prank call posted online, Adam Schiff can be heard discussing the committee's Russia investigation and increasingly bizarre allegations about Trump with a man who claimed to be Andriy Parubiy, the chairman of the Ukrainian Parliament.

The call, made a year ago, was actually from two Russian comedians nicknamed 'Vovan' and 'Lexus' who have become notorious for their phony calls to high-ranking American officials and celebrities, including UN Ambassador Nikki Haley and Elton John.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and top security officials have toured the occupied Syrian Golan Heights, warning the enemies of Israel against "testing" the country's resolve.

On his tour of the Israeli-occupied territories on Tuesday, Netanyahu said Israel has the means to fend off any of its "enemies." The prime minister also praised the efforts of the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) stationed in the occupied territories for their efforts in protecting Israel's "borders."

"We seek peace but are prepared for any scenario and I wouldn't suggest to anyone that they test us," Netanyahu said."I'm impressed with the immense efforts of the IDF here to protect both our borders and our country."

Kiev officials are scrambling to make amends with the president-elect after quietly working to boost Clinton.

Donald Trump wasn't the only presidential candidate whose campaign was boosted by officials of a former Soviet bloc country.


Ukrainian government officials tried to help Hillary Clinton and undermine Trump by publicly questioning his fitness for office. They also disseminated documents implicating a top Trump aide in corruption and suggested they were investigating the matter, only to back away after the election. And they helped Clinton's allies research damaging information on Trump and his advisers, a Politico investigation found.

A Ukrainian-American operative who was consulting for the Democratic National Committee met with top officials in the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington in an effort to expose ties between Trump, top campaign aide Paul Manafort and Russia, according to people with direct knowledge of the situation.

The Ukrainian efforts had an impact in the race, helping to force Manafort's resignation and advancing the narrative that Trump's campaign was deeply connected to Ukraine's foe to the east, Russia. But they were far less concerted or centrally directed than Russia's alleged hacking and dissemination of Democratic emails.

While the specter of a nuclear war with North Korea has faded in recent weeks, China is not taking chances, and ahead of the Winter Olympics in South Korea, the Chinese government has deployed 300,000 troops and multiple mobile strike groups to its highly-guarded border with North Korea, a move which signals that Beijing is quietly gearing for a potential crisis between Kim Jong Un and the United States in the coming months.

According to South Korea's Chosun Ilbo news, "China is preparing for a potential war on the Korean Peninsula by reinforcing missile defenses near the border with North Korea" citing a report from Radio Free Asia. "Military units in Yanbian were relocated from Heilongjiang Province, thus adding 300,000 troops along the border."

RFA quoted a North Korean source in China that the Chinese military late last year deployed another missile defense battery at an armored division in Helong, west of Longjing in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture. Now it is deploying missile defense batteries near North Korean reservoirs by the Apnok and Duman rivers.

Since Vladimir Putin became president of Russia in 2000, there has been a steady barrage of negative press and hostility from the West. With Putin up for reelection this year, Sharon Tennison tries to separate fact from fiction.
Russian President Vladimir Putin obviously has his faults and has made his share of mistakes. Yet, my experiences with him, as well as what I have heard over the years from people I trust -- including U.S. officials who have worked with him worked closely -- indicate that Putin is essentially a straightforward, reliable and exceptionally inventive man.

The Russian president is clearly a long-term thinker and planner and has proven to be an excellent analyst and strategist. He is a leader who can quietly work toward his goals under mounds of accusations and myths that have been steadily leveled at him since he became the Russian Federation's second president.

Everyone who's asking "why did the stock market crash Monday?" is asking the wrong question. The real poser is "why did it take so long for this crash to happen?"

The crash itself was significant-Donald Trump's favorite index, the Dow Jones Industrial (DJIA) fell 4.6 percent in one day. This is about four times the standard range of the index-and so according to conventional economics, it should almost never happen.

Of course, mainstream economists are wildly wrong about this, as they have been about almost everything else for some time now. In fact, a four percent fall in the market is unusual, but far from rare: there are well over 100 days in the last century that the Dow Jones tumbled by this much.

When Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull of Australia recently proposed new espionage laws, he stressed the need for disclosure: Public officials with ties to overseas governments and entities would have to report any foreign effort to shape domestic politics.

The bills, first introduced in December, were seen by many in government as a vital tool for protecting against meddling by countries like China and Russia.

But lawyers groups, human rights organisations, journalists and government watchdogs have all criticised the new rules as so far-reaching that they threaten to make Australia more like the authoritarian regimes it aims to resist.

"It's giving government a hell of a lot of power, and it's dangerous," said Elaine Pearson, the Australia director for Human Rights Watch.

While in the UK giving talks on Syria (and the DPRK/North Korea) last week, I was invited to speak on 'Sputnik Orbiting the World', the program hosted by George & Gayatri Galloway.

The program description:

Speaking truth to power ought to be the duty of journalism but it is not. Speaking the power's "truth" is the way to get and keep the gig in today's media - and if you do so, you'll be richly rewarded with money and flattery.

One of our frequent guests, Patrick Cockburn, had a great journalist father, Claud Cockburn, who said that the relationship of the journalist to power should be that of the dog to the lamp-post. Nothing is true, he'd say, until it has been officially denied. Fortunately, every now and then a journalist emerges who goes where few dare, who speaks what few will speak, without fear or favor. One such journalist is Eva Bartlett, so we invited her into the Sputnik studio to speak truth to power.

The French Minister of Culture Françoise Nyssen said that a judicial procedure would be established to stop the dissemination of fake news, as she introduced the anti-fake news law.

"The measures that we will be working on from now until March are to create a law about 'confidence in information' that will permit us to act very quickly when a fake news story goes viral, particularly during an election period," said Nyssen in an interview with Journal du Dimanche on February 4.

"This new law will establish new responsibilities for the different media platforms, which will have to cooperate with the state and be transparent about their sponsored content. A judicial procedure will be put in place to allow rapid blocking of the dissemination of fake news once it has become manifest."