Well this is interesting.
I had intended to put up a new thread for people who want to continue commenting on the Salisbury and Amesbury cases, as the last piece I did on it has reached an unmanageable 1,500+ comments. But just as I was about to do so, I was alerted to an important piece over on the Moon of Alabama website, entitled, "
CIA Director Used Fake Skripal Incident Photos To Manipulate Trump".
The gist of the piece is as follows. Back in April 2018,
the Washington Post published an article about the decision taken by the United States to expel 60 Russian diplomats in the wake of the Salisbury poisoning. According to the authors, the day after the decision was made, President Trump reacted in anger when he found out that the French and the Germans were expelling just four diplomats each:
"The next day, when the expulsions were announced publicly, Trump erupted, officials said. To his shock and dismay, France and Germany were each expelling only four Russian officials - far fewer than the 60 his administration had decided on. The President, who seemed to believe that other individual countries would largely equal the United States, was furious that his administration was being portrayed in the media as taking by far the toughest stance on Russia."
Mr Trump, it seems, believed that he had been misled by officials, as the piece goes on to say:
"Growing angrier, Trump insisted that his aides had misled him about the magnitude of the expulsions. 'There were curse words,' the official said, 'a lot of curse words.'"
Whether Mr Trump was misled about the magnitude of the expulsions is impossible to say without a transcript of that meeting. What does seem certain, however, is that
he was misled in another, far more important way, as Moon of Alabama goes on to point out.
Comment: This is just more proof that if the West is going to thrive in any way these days, the West needs to cooperate with the East - whether some in the establishment like it or not: