Bad intel is being used as a tool to cause rot within our country. We see this time and time again, and I have grown sick of it.
On April 6, U.S. Intelligence officials publicly admitted they have been using weak intelligence to fight an information war with Russia. “It doesn’t have to be solid intelligence,” one U.S. official said. “It’s more important to get out ahead of them [the Russians], Putin specifically, before they do something.”
So, U.S. government officials admit that they are saying whatever they think will get the desired reaction from the Russians. Any relation to the truth is purely coincidental. All’s fair in love and war, but the issue here is that the average American is the recipient of these psychological operations just as much as the Russians are. We need to be aware of how much “news” is propaganda in order to be situationally aware and to make the best plans for ourselves and our families.
A lot of people have begun to understand this intuitively. Trust in media is close to an all-time low.
Let’s look at some examples of why average Americans have lost faith in our once-trusted government and media institutions.
On March 9, a U.S. Defense official said of the Russian claims about the U.S. hosting biological weapons research facilities in Ukraine, “It is absurd. It is laughable. It is untrue.”
The day before this, March 8, before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Marco Rubio asked Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland whether or not Ukraine had chemical or biological weapons. She admitted that not only do biological research facilities exist (this link has since been removed), but some of them contain research materials dangerous enough that the U.S. fears the Russians getting hold of them.
Under Secretary Nuland immediately followed this up by saying that if a chemical or biological attack occurred, she’s absolutely sure it would be the Russians releasing the weapons, but as far as I’m concerned, that’s beside the point. Our leaders are lying, and they are not even trying that hard to conceal it.
And it’s not only about Ukraine. On April 10, 2022, Dr. Fauci said that people were just going to have to start making individual risk calculations regarding Covid. “We’re going to have to live with some degree of virus in the community.”
Sounds like common sense.
It would have been nice to hear that before hundreds of thousands of small businesses closed and millions of children had their educational and social lives irreparably damaged. Instead, for the past two years, we’ve been hearing Dr. Fauci say such things as:
- August 19, 2020: “You don’t want to mandate and try to force anyone to take a vaccine.”
- July 11, 2021: “. . . I do believe, at the local level, there should be more mandates.”
- September 10, 2021: He asked state officials to support OSHA’s regulations requiring employers with more than 100 workers to enforce a vaccine mandate for their employees
But now, as of April 2022, we should all just be responsible for our own health. I would have been happy to hear that back in December 2020.
And I understand that evidence evolves, but the goalposts have moved a lot in a short period of time.
We have been told to “trust the science,” but that phrase is a contradiction in terms. Saying “trust the science” is asking someone to take a leap of faith.
Science isn’t about trust.
It’s about looking at hard facts and drawing reasonable, defensible conclusions. It’s about airing your conclusions and arguing with other educated people. Without the process of review, criticism, and defense before your peers, it’s not science.
It’s just another belief system, a faith with its own sometimes-fanatical adherents.
To make educated decisions, we need the best data available. If we’re supposed to take responsibility for our own health, great.
Give us all the information we need to make the best decisions for ourselves and our families. For starters, let us see the safety profiles of the vaccines we were all supposed to take.
A group of doctors and scientists committed to the health and safety of their patients filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to examine the data used by the FDA to license the recent Covid vaccines. Pfizer said it needed 75 years to produce the requested documentation.
Now, a Texas judge ordered them to produce it in less than a year, proving that some federal employees still do their jobs, but the fact that Pfizer even made the request is outrageous. I’ll say it again: how are we supposed to trust government and industry leaders when they do these kinds of things?
Both of the above examples are very recent. But let’s look at an older example of sloppy government work involving faulty intelligence.
The invasion of Iraq.
Before anyone writes me off as being anti-military, allow me to say that, at the time, I absolutely believed what we were being told. I believed, along with many others, that we had rock-solid evidence that Hussein was building chemical and biological weapons. I believed what I heard on the news: that this justified an invasion. Otherwise, it was just too likely that the weapons would fall into the hands of terrorists.
More importantly, my military-age friends and family members believed this, and many of them signed up.
One of my best friends worked in heavy construction in Iraq, which meant that she saw a lot of action. Her unit built roads. They were usually the first people in any given area and encountered a lot of opposition.
I remember asking her what she thought when she got back after her first deployment. She told me it was like nothing on any news station. She said, in a way, they were all right, and they were all wrong. Some villages really did hate and resent the Americans, just like CNN said. Other ones loved and welcomed the Americans, just like Fox said. She said it was messy and confusing.
So bear in mind that anything I write, I write out of a firm conviction that the American military deserves better. They deserve clear-cut, winnable missions. They deserve to have their lives valued enough that the government will not send them overseas, putting their lives at risk unless they have the backing of the majority of the American people.
While Congress overwhelmingly voted to invade Iraq, support among the American people dried up within a few years. When my friend got back from her second tour, she was told at the airport as she returned home that she was a murderer. She signed up to serve her country. She didn’t deserve that.
By 2015, even Colin Powell admitted the war was a big mistake. No weapons of mass destruction were ever found. He blamed bad intelligence for the decisions that were made.
But it’s easy to go on screen and say, “Whoops, my bad.” It’s not so easy to spend years of your life in violence far away from home. It was not easy for the American troops that didn’t come back. It’s not easy for their families. And it’s not easy for the more than 200,000 Iraqi civilians that died.
“Bad intel” has consequences.
I had a close family member that died in combat in Afghanistan, and it upended my life.
The depression afterwards ruined my marriage, changing my financial world. I look at my own circumstances after losing a loved one overseas and then look at the people living in Iraq. Millions of Iraqis have lost family members as well. The thought of multiplying my own pain (and I am still living in relative comfort in a first-world country) by millions makes my head spin.
I still believe that the U.S. military, for the most part, is made of people that just want to serve our country. I grew up implicitly trusting American military leadership. But they have squandered that trust. When Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller, a veteran of both Iraq and Afghanistan, publicly demanded consequences for the disastrous Afghanistan pullout, he was court-martialed. I firmly believe Lt. Col. Scheller’s grievances were legitimate. Soldiers and their families deserve competent leadership, and throwing someone in jail over a workplace disagreement is not supposed to happen in a free country.
Media networks spouting propaganda masquerading as news isn’t supposed to happen in a free country, either. This week, a top U.S. Defense official admitted they had been feeding weak intelligence to the press in order to manipulate people. But the manipulation has been going on for a long time. They’ve just stopped pretending to hide it.
(All the more reason to check out our free QUICKSTART Guide to emergency evacuations.)
None of this will really surprise the prepping community.
But it does beg the question: what do we do? When our main sources of information have admitted that they are releasing propaganda, how do we get good information?
I grew up in a household with parents that read the news religiously. One parent speaks Russian, and the other speaks German, and my German-speaking parent has been listening to radio broadcasts in German lately.
These days, I wish I’d paid attention when my parents tried teaching me their languages as a kid.
But other countries have their own brands of propaganda too. I have friends all over the world, and they have all expressed frustration over the lack of good information. We all look at the news. We all feel like it’s mostly designed to manipulate us. It’s not just the U.S. Do we have other options?
I’ve believed for a while now that looking at a variety of alternative sources is the best bet.
That, combined with securing communications between yourself and your real-world friends, is probably the best we can do.
Speaking about communications…
Regarding securing communications between yourself and your community, The Organic Prepper has been posting a lot of information about ham radio lately.
One of our authors just published a guide to post-disaster communications, and now is the time to learn all you can.
It may be impossible soon to get a good big-picture assessment of world affairs. But that’s something people lived without for a long time.
French peasants of the 1800s didn’t know what was going on in Japan. They didn’t need to. Personally, I’ve enjoyed living in a world where I can learn about other places and other cultures. Having friends all over the world has given me perspective and helped me learn better ways to live in accordance with my values.
But all good things come to an end, and maybe the end of global networks of friends is near. I hope not, but it’s a possibility.
Understanding events on the other side of the globe can give us wisdom and perspective, but we can live without it. We do need, however, ways of communicating within our own trusted communities. We may not be able to trust our leaders and institutions, but we all need to have our small circles of friends and relatives.
The time to make plans for strengthening those bonds is now.
What are your thoughts on bad intel?
Have you noticed an uptick in outright falsehoods and manipulations via the media? What are your thoughts on this? Why do you think it’s happening? Share your opinions in the comments.
About Marie Hawthorne
A lover of novels and cultivator of superb apple pie recipes, Marie spends her free time writing about the world around her.
You mentioned something very sad – that US military members for the most part believe they’re doing something good. They’re not, they’re just pawns used by the globalists for their tyrannical fascist aspirations of a one world government in which an all-powerful unopposable oligarchy will enslave everyone else, giving them zero rights whatsoever.
So true.
Yep.
As a scientist, one of my favorite expressions is ‘math and science don’t lie, but human beings with an agenda will manipulate math and science to fit that agenda’.
I recommend people surround themselves, as much as practical, with people you trust who have critical thinking and problem solving skills, believe in math and science and the scientific method, and are willing to have candid discussions about situations in order to arrive at the truth. I have friends and family all over the world, including some who are now, or have previously been in the military. People who lie to me don’t remain in my network very long.
Also, consider that sometimes the use of bad intel is by design, for a variety of reasons. Sometimes it is because people repeat talking points or something they’ve heard, but not bothered to verify. I believe it was Ronald Reagan who said ‘Trust but verify’. In the world I live in, it is ‘Trust no one. Always verify.’
sorry, i’m late to the conversation. i totally agree with you and if you have people who don’t want to have those candid discussions they shouldn’t belong to your group. i have some people i know that are like that, they are still my friends, but not someone whom i would put any weight in what they say.
being in the military myself in the 80’s i personally know that what they have put out there isn’t the truth, always deceptive/ambiguous and when i got out i decided i was not going to be part of that. the internet is a good and bad place to get information, but you have to ensure who or what you are taking in is valid.
i especially like your last sentence. exactly.
I stopped watching and reading the fake news media in 1999,after finding they were lying to us by doing some research on what we were being told.For proof, look up ‘Operation Mockingbird’ on an independent internet search engine like ‘Brave’, and look how long they have been lying to us.
This is why I don’t own a TV set. I pick sites I find reliable online to find my news and its is a very short list.
There is alot of misinformation and down right lies put out by our political class. Yes, we do have to keep an open mind and shift through a great deal of information. I was in the military and I was deployed to Iraq. I do believe there was chemical weapons there but enough time passed for the Saddam government to bury (they bury everything) or send to Syria. I saw a water table chemistry sample report that had elevated levels of blister and VX agents. But as to actual munitions, no, none were found.
Actually the chemical weapons came out of Germany. The US team went down and set it up. Don’t ask me how I know. I do remember US soldiers found the chemical weapons, but were told not to show the labels because they were US.
I have a ex-wife in Russia. We have emailed each other about life events but recently about the war. Her views are different than mine. Her news is biased as is ours. I try to get to the truth by reading credible sources. Hard to know what to believe.
All intel is bad until verified by other sources, especially humanint. I working in the legal field, its a given that everything is a lie, the challenge is to find the common thread. That is the only truth. Military, cops, accountants, engineers….all have b/w worlds, everyone else hss dhades of grey. #trustnotregretnot
The Problem in Iraq was bad intel, but not completely false intel as you imply.
The lies were spun by the media that no weapons of mass destruction were found. There are reports that there were indeed Chemical weapons in Iraq, one’s that we sold to Them. Then a big coverup ensued.
There was also plenty of base materials, including stock piles of yellow cake Uranium, which were quietly shipped out to Canada for “disposal”.
Then, one of his own General’s wrote a book declaring that shortly before the invasion that a secret mission transported stockpiles of WMD’s out of the country and across the Border, destination unknown. It seems the plan was if they rid of them, then US would not invade.
Who knows what the truth really is, but they had WMD’s at one time and the facilities to make more of them. They had used them in the past, they just were not being used at that time.
So the problem is not just bad intel. But the swarm of lies and half truths the public is being fed by multiple sources on all these and other fronts.
The only “intel” you can really trust is what you, verify and gather yourself.
Globalist politics and Globalist ambitions are most likely behind all of this. A lot more of this has to due with securing Natural resources and Financial concerns, along with exerting foreign control over the nations. The “bad Intel” line, is just one of the lies and cover stories used to justify their actions.
There does seem to be a coordinated effort by the media to misinform. One source of news for me is Yahoo.com. They are incredibly, shockingly biased. No news agency could survive profitably doing this without financial support. We blame billionaires like Soros, government agencies (CIA, NSA, etc.), large corporations and a combinations thereof.
It’s hard to believe but it has become obvious, if not clear as to the source. As Selco pointed out this should not surprise us but should be recognized is a sign of the times.
I think strengthening our faith in our Father in heaven is the sure, easy and immediate solution.
The lying has been going on since long before any of us were even born.
When the US president asked Congress for war against Spain in 1898 he concealed from them the fact that Spain had already agreed to the vast majority of US demands.
In 1915 German intelligence learned of munitions (in violation of international law) were onboard the passenger ship Lusitania and were therefore vulnerable to being torpedoed. Germany therefore attempted to warn Americans not to sail on the Lusitania by ordering warning ads in some 30 US newspapers. The thoroughly corrupt Wilson government (seeking to maximize the number of American casualties to drag us into the European civil war) managed to shut down all but two or three of those ads.
It’s never appeared in US government-approved public school indoctrination history books that Lenin’s famous train ride from Switzerland to Moscow with a huge pile of money was funded jointly by some American oligarchs, some British government sources and the German general staff — all with their own motives to remove Russia from the war. After Lenin took power there was a stream of those oligarchs who traveled to Moscow (under cover as Red Cross representatives) to exact various industry trade monopolies in Russia from Lenin. That would go a long way towards explaining why one of FDR’s first acts when he took the US presidency in 1933 was to grant diplomatic recognition to Stalin’s monstrously murderous regime to facilitate western loans to Russia to prop up those trade monopolies. This was while the ever corrupt NY Times was printing stories about Stalin’s “glorious workers’ paradise” while Stalin was starving millions in Ukraine via the Holodomor.
The lesson that FDR (who was an assistant secretary of the US Navy at that time) learned was that to sucker America into such wars requires a lot more casualties. So prior to 1941‘s Pearl Harbor, FDR had spent two whole years trying to figure out how to goad Japan into a “surprise” attack. The book “Day of Deceit” by the late Robert Stinnett tells that full and disgusting story.
During JFK’s presidency the Joint Chiefs of Staff had signed off on a plan to commit a false flag attack on various sites in Florida to be blamed on Cuba’s Fidel Castro in order to justify a US invasion. They never forgave JFK for squashing that murderous plan. After his assassination the faked Gulf of Tonkin attack in Vietnam was planned several months before the alleged attack was claimed before Congress by LBJ. Many years later during Ross Perot’s 3rd party run for the presidency, his VP candidate (Admiral Stockdale) explained that he had been in the Gulf of Tonkin in the area where and when the attack was alleged. Stockdale absolutely said that no such attack even happened.
The unending spending for the Vietnam war caused President Nixon in 1971 to welch on the US promise of backing financial obligations in US dollars to foreign governments with gold.
The ancient saying that “the first casualty of war is always truth” should be remembered for good reason.
–Lewis
Thanks Lewis.
Interesting article and comments. Thanks to the author for even approaching it.
This subject is as vast and deep as the ocean. And, I’m sure, like the ocean, gets darker the deeper one descends into its depths.
I’d sure appreciate to read what renegadeprophet’s thoughts are on this subject.????
Glenn Greenwald has written how certain government agencies will “leak” information to various journalists to push a narrative. Of course the journalist will gladly push the “story” as they get the scoop. They have been doing for decades.
Intel is only as good as the source. The US used to have a good HUMINT capability. As technology advanced, we became more reliant on it and our adversaries learned how to turn it to their advantage.
Accountability is a big issue. After the suicide bombing outside of the Kabul airport gate, killing 13 US service members, the US did a drone strike on an alleged bomber. Turns out he was not a bomb maker at all, he and a number of innocents to include children died. To date, no one has been held accountable. For that matter, no one has been held accountable for the whole mess of a withdraw from Afghanistan.
The response to COVID got politicized to the max, and MSM was all in on it. There was an article on TOP that discussed the mental harm the lockdowns did. Recent studies show not only mental harm the lockdowns did, but physical (weight gain, increase in suicides), education (lack of in person schooling hurt minorities the most), and even economic (small business that closed for good) harm. A working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, found states that did not enact harsh lockdown mandates fared better in both health and their economies than those states that did.
The other elephant in the room the government does not want to talk about is the number one concern of Americans: Inflation.
For months it was dismissed as “transitionary.”
Not so much. And it is expected to get worse.
Granted the Ukraine/Russia war/sanctions do have an impact on global commodity prices. But fuel, food, and goods prices were on the rise well before Russian forces amassed on the Ukraine border.
After seeing various reports turn out to be false do to just bad reporting or out right lies/propaganda (using video gaming images as reporting), I take everything coming out of the conflict with a box-O-salt. I wait a day or two for verification or correction of the report.
Where to get good information?
Alt-media/independent journalists.
“Where to get good information? Alt-media/independent journalists.”
how do you know it’s good? because it’s different? because it meets your preconceptions? because of its emotive rhetoric? how?
Just because its alt does not mean it is true. You have to search to find out.
Almost the only place you DO find the truth is alt media, but you have to check carefully any source.
What’s worse, I think, than Pfizer asking for 75 years to release info re its concoction is that (to my understanding) it was actually the FDA that asked for the 75 years…not Pfizer. (See https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/fda-75-years-release-pfizer-vaccine-documents/ and https://www.sirillp.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/FDA-Brief-and-Appendix-e3999de9aee38921cd4fbb035c33e304.pdf)
As for the war in Iraq, I was a college student during the lead-up to that war. I had the luxury of time to watch all of the IAEA and other hearings on CSPAN prior to the invasion of Iraq. The press spun its coverage of these hearings to gin up support for an invasion. It was clear to me from these hearings that the invasion of Iraq was unjustified. The “cross-section” of the mobile WMD lab that Colin Powell famously described was a fantasy, a theory made up by those would wish to avenge the man who, in G. W. Bush’s words, “tried to kill my dad.” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfmATUzBwxY)
The lesson to me was this: Ignore what the press is telling you…whenever possible, go directly to the source and see things for yourself.
thought this would segue into a discussion of local intel gathering after grid down.
Great article Marie thank you and some wonderful comments from most..
The handshake style of Victoria Nuland in the picture above should tell most who she is aligned to.. the fake media leave symbols and clues around telling the people with “the right handshake” what the truth is. Like the inevitable picture of “a shoe” after a false flag terror or school shooting attack. Fauci is another one of them with hand in jacket style clues.. all lies with one sad agenda to destroy lives!
Mankind has abandoned GOD with false “so called” science. Watch Walter Veith’s Amazing Discoveries “what’s up prof” for eye opening facts.
Kurt,
Funny, I was saying to myself to just look at a woman of authority’s hand shake…hers is whimpy, don’t trust her. And then I read what you wrote!
And yes, it’s been a slow fade for decades…when we abandon God it will never turn out well.
As a mother of 3 military kids…yes, most have ideals that they are fighting the good fight. Naive & idealistic probably, but please remember they are someone’s children too. Please pray for their protection from the evil plans of people as you do your own family members.
Science is proven wrong all the time. Eggs are good for you, eggs are bad. The mRNA doesn’t change your DNA, it does. God has been proven mathematically by a scientist mathematician who is hiding in the desert, and none of us can prove him wrong because we are so much dumber than this genius. The humblest of men have spoken to God and relate to us that He is real. Still we do not believe or doubt. God tells us who the father of lies is. So why do we believe liars. “Trust but verify” defy’s reason. Once a liar, always a liar unless they convert. Verify and never trust anyone but God. Fool me once shame on you, believe a liar a second time eat dirt dummy. What part of kill, steal, and destroy that God told us about did we not understand? He hates all of creation including the dirt you stand on. The useful well paid idiots don’t get this. These are old world long lived blood lines that MK ultra their kids to keep the satanic agenda going. Victims yes, but perps just the same. These are the same SOB’s who killed Christ. Their home base nest is the Ukraine of the fake jews satanic cabal. This is why they had no problem killing the real Jews in the Holocaust. They intend to usurp the inheritance of the rightful heirs. And their Talmudic believe is you are like cattle and part of their inheritance so can be exterminated with out conscience. No matter read the end of the book. No one dies one second before God wills it, it’s how you die. There are more of us than of the evil one. Only problem is they have all the money and big boy toys to our lawn mowers and diapers. Do we pick up the fight in the face of these odds? Not if we don’t believe God will come to our aid. Fight now because they intend to make things so hard we can not. Prep, fight, pray.
Hello,
We offer to be a part of the solution in filtering out the “noise” and dis-info at our site and recently added this site to it, thanks to the RSS feed. Please check it out, bookmark it, and tell your friends and family!
My thoughts and suggestions about what we can should and can do are unprintable.
F***ing Lock & Load my friends.