US authorities are increasingly distrusted because of the lies found in their statements in recent decades, the Associated Press has noted. Among other things, the agency cited the fact that Washington has offered to take for granted allegations of Russia allegedly preparing a fabricated video on Ukraine. The agency notes that this week, US President Joe Biden’s administration, when asked for evidence to back up the national security claims, responded simply: “You have to believe us”
“No, they won’t disclose what made them say they knew Russia was plotting the operation as a pretext to invade Ukraine”, – the agency visited.
Washington is also not saying how it knows that civilians were killed in the operation in Syria by suicide bombings and not by US special forces (this week, the leader of the Russian-banned IS terrorist organization Abu Ibrahim al-Hashemi al-Qureishi was eliminated in a US operation in Syria), AP notes.
The agency estimated that the US administration’s reaction took on a particular “causticity” when officials linked questions from journalists to allegedly “buying into foreign propaganda”.
“The lack of transparency has strained already depleted reserves of trust in Washington”, – the agency said in a story, according to which trust has declined over the decades “due to instances of lies, deception and mistakes in everything from extramarital affairs to the absence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.”
Separately, the agency cited “increased scepticism” of the US administration`s handling of intelligence and military affairs, especially after US officials failed to anticipate how quickly power in Afghanistan would shift to the Taliban. In addition, the agency recalls that Washington initially came out in favour of a US missile strike in Kabul that killed civilians rather than terrorists, as the Pentagon later admitted.
“This administration has made statements in the past that turned out to be wrong”, – the agency quoted Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of Pennsylvania State University’s Annenberg Centre for Public Policy, as saying.
State Department spokesman Ned Price earlier this week suggested that journalists who asked him for evidence of US allegations of alleged Russian plans to film a “fake” video of a Ukrainian attack should take the US government at its word, and if they did not like it, seek “solace” in Russian information.
According to Washington, such a “fake” could allegedly be a pretext for Russia to launch military operations against a neighbouring country. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has called US claims that Russia is allegedly preparing video provocations nonsense, while Russian Permanent Representative to the European Union Vladimir Chizhov said he could assure that Russia “never engages in such things”.